Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 1: This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
Speaker 1: today we're going to be talking about Mario Bava's nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty gothic horror classic Black Sunday. And I selected this
Speaker 1: movie for this week because it is Halloween season. We're
Speaker 1: in October, and I think if you're looking for a
Speaker 1: very just core Halloween viewing experience and you've never seen
Speaker 1: this one before, it's about as good as you can do.
Speaker 1: Please take my recommendation and check out Black Sunday. It is,
Speaker 1: I think, simultaneously, about as good and as close to
Speaker 1: the bullseye of the gothic horror target as you can get.
Speaker 1: It's got pretty much everything you could want in terms
Speaker 1: of gothic horror texture, gothic horror themes, but it also
Speaker 1: has added dashes of weirdness. It kind of cuts harder
Speaker 1: and goes harder than most movies of this type. But
Speaker 1: as far as the texture, you've got like searing, raging,
Speaker 1: very hate oriented witchcraft. You know, the core witch in
Speaker 1: the movie is constantly selling the virtues of hating. It's
Speaker 1: got surprise vampires and the second act that I don't
Speaker 1: think I really expected. There's sort of like one line
Speaker 1: about vampires at the very beginning, but I don't know
Speaker 1: when you get to them. I'm like, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: this was going to be a vampire movie. It's got
Speaker 1: undead paramours, you know, roaming the hills. It's got ruined castles,
Speaker 1: roaring fires, secret passageways and trap doors, canopy beds, silver crucifixes,
Speaker 1: some menacing Doperman's. I like that that detail in the prologue.
Speaker 1: It's got the inquisition, hooded executioners, it has bat attacks,
Speaker 1: it has moldy tombs and coffins with windows. It's got
Speaker 1: beautiful deep black shadows, great high contrasts lighting and photography.
Speaker 1: A lot of scenes with this, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: frightening quality of being lit only by fading candlelight. This
Speaker 1: unique concept, I would say, of a spiked bronze torture mask.
Speaker 2: Rob.
Speaker 1: Maybe we can get into if there's any really, really
Speaker 1: any precedent for this. I'm sure it's come up before,
Speaker 1: but it's imagine just an iron maiden, but only for
Speaker 1: your face. And I have some notes on this, yeah,
Speaker 1: and then also maybe one of the film's defining visual
Speaker 1: features Barber Steel making laser eyes and giving monologues about
Speaker 1: the exquisite pleasures of hate.
Speaker 2: That's right. It really does have it all. Funeral shadows,
Speaker 2: black hooded figures, the whole nine yards. This is a
Speaker 2: film that everyone loves, and we're not going to really
Speaker 2: pull any hot takes here. We love it as well.
Speaker 2: It is a mass piece. It holds up exceedingly well.
Speaker 2: And you know, I'm it's one of those films that
Speaker 2: it's kind of surprising that I took so long to
Speaker 2: see it myself. I've kind of come to it late
Speaker 2: in my viewing of Mario Bava films, because I when
Speaker 2: I think of Bava, I think of his you know,
Speaker 2: those bright technicolor pictures, the fan hasmogorical color schemes of
Speaker 2: like Planet of the Vampires or Blood and Black Lace,
Speaker 2: And so whenever I would be in the mood to
Speaker 2: put on a Bava film, I often find I watched
Speaker 2: them on airplanes, by the way, and I watched this
Speaker 2: one on an airplane. I'll often just sort of navigate
Speaker 2: to the color ones. I'm like, okay, how about Lisa
Speaker 2: and the devil or whatever. We'll try this one out,
Speaker 2: and I'll just skip over Black Sunday because I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: that's black and white. I don't know if I want
Speaker 2: to see a Mario Bava black and white film. But
Speaker 2: to no one's you know, to no one's surprised, it
Speaker 2: is absolutely gorgeous and black and white. And as we'll discuss,
Speaker 2: like this was his intention as well, he intentionally chose
Speaker 2: to make this film his first solo directorial credit in
Speaker 2: this just splendid, deep black and white gothic format.
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about, because yes, also
Speaker 1: I admire Bava as a filmmaker on mini levels. But
Speaker 1: one of the first things I think about when I
Speaker 1: think Mario Bava is like colored jell lights. I think
Speaker 1: of or just strange, kind of non realistic but very
Speaker 1: intuitively powerful uses uses of color in his films. You know,
Speaker 1: his supernatural films often have this feeling where there is
Speaker 1: magic in the air, and that magic is signaled by
Speaker 1: the fact that the light is purple when there's no
Speaker 1: realistic reason that it should be or you know, or
Speaker 1: is green or some other strange color. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: love those colors. And also you know the colors in
Speaker 1: his sets, so the black and white energy is a
Speaker 1: very different thing than I'm used to with Bava, but
Speaker 1: it is so strong, And I like to be clear,
Speaker 1: I like Black Sunday on pretty much every level. I
Speaker 1: like the story, The script is very good, the the
Speaker 1: acting is mostly pretty good. That you know, there's some
Speaker 1: kind of creaky acting that you would get in a
Speaker 1: lot of especially mid century dubbed horror films. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's got very good editing, strong propulsive editing that drives
Speaker 1: the story and heightens the horror and the tension. But
Speaker 1: the best thing about this movie is the way that
Speaker 1: it looks. The black and white cinematography is gorgeous. It's
Speaker 1: got clever shot framing, beautiful use of shadows and light,
Speaker 1: great set design and locations. And also I have to
Speaker 1: single out a surprising, even shocking quality of gore for
Speaker 1: a black and white film from nineteen sixty. And when
Speaker 1: I say that, I don't mean that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of gore. This is not a splatterfest. But what little
Speaker 1: gore is there is just much more disturbing and visceral
Speaker 1: than you would expect.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, those moments of gore actually make you a little
Speaker 2: thankful that it's not in color. There's more than enough
Speaker 2: to disturb you in the black and line.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also in terms of the film's visual appeal,
Speaker 1: I would have to call out Barbara Steele's face as
Speaker 1: an important part of the visual palette of the film.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that just in the sense that like, oh,
Speaker 1: she's a beautiful actress, which a lot of people do say,
Speaker 1: but I mean that the faces she pulls for the
Speaker 1: camera are like a distinct part of what this movie
Speaker 1: is trying to do in terms of imagery. And it's
Speaker 1: no accident. I think that most of the posters and
Speaker 1: the artwork for the film are just like a sort
Speaker 1: of almost caricature level drawing of Barbara Steele's face, making
Speaker 1: those wide, horrifying eyes. She is a unique looking actress naturally,
Speaker 1: but in this movie she makes faces that could peel garlic.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely unreal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because, as we'll discuss it, as a dual role,
Speaker 2: she plays a long ago executed witch who has now
Speaker 2: in the course of the film, come back to life
Speaker 2: in unnatural, undead form, and she also plays that character's
Speaker 2: great granddaughter, so she gets to play enormy and then
Speaker 2: she also gets to play you know, queen of the
Speaker 2: Dead essentially, So it is in that role as this
Speaker 2: undead witch that she really gets to just shine with
Speaker 2: manic energy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and actually you can combine two of those things
Speaker 1: I singled out in some of the film's most striking frames,
Speaker 1: the gore and the barber steel eyes on. There's sometimes
Speaker 1: where she's in witch mode and she's making the witch face,
Speaker 1: but also she has holes in her face from this
Speaker 1: torture mask and they look like barnacles. It's disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, we'll have a lot to say about this,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it makes perfect sense that this film would
Speaker 2: be absolutely stunning and beautiful in black and white. Take
Speaker 2: Mario Baba's additional color palette away from him, and he
Speaker 2: still is a master cinematographer, you know, and at this
Speaker 2: point in his career we'll allude to, you know, he
Speaker 2: had served as a cinematographer on numerous films. He was
Speaker 2: he was not a newbie, even though this was his
Speaker 2: first solo directorial effort. And for listeners to the show,
Speaker 2: you have heard us talk about Mario Baba before. This
Speaker 2: is actually our fifth Mario Baba selection for Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Following episodes on sixty three's Black Sabbath, which was essentially
Speaker 2: a kind of a sequel, not really a sequel, but
Speaker 2: a spiritual successor to this film in some ways.
Speaker 1: An anthology film in that.
Speaker 2: Case, Yeah, Boris Karloff of course, sixty five's Planet of
Speaker 2: the Vampires essentially like the granddaddy of sci fi horror,
Speaker 2: sixty eight Danger Diabolic, an excellent super crime movie, and
Speaker 2: sixty one's Hercules in the Haunted World, that rare horror
Speaker 2: peplam film in which Hercules and a tragically dubbed Christopher
Speaker 2: Lee go at it in the underworld.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I can sometimes forget Christopher Lee is in
Speaker 1: that one. That is not one of Christopher Lee's greatest roles,
Speaker 1: but the movie's pretty fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as of this recording, the only other director
Speaker 2: whose work we featured five times on the show is
Speaker 2: Roger Corman. So yeah, Bob and Corman are right there
Speaker 2: at the top as of this recording. Maybe we'll do
Speaker 2: a bunch of other films by another director and they'll
Speaker 2: equal and surpass them, But we'll see. I will allude
Speaker 2: to some other facts about this film's release. There are
Speaker 2: some different versions of it, depending on where it was released.
Speaker 2: But I was looking in some of my favorite film
Speaker 2: volumes for a few tidbits about the movie, and Michael Weldon,
Speaker 2: in one of his Psychotronic Film Guides, points out that
Speaker 2: when the film premiered in Cleveland at the Allen Theater,
Speaker 2: I believe this would have been This would have been
Speaker 2: the AIP the American International Pictures release. As a promotionary tactic,
Speaker 2: they handed out cards to the patrons that featured a
Speaker 2: protective chant. I guess, so when the film gets too scary,
Speaker 2: you can just look down at your chant card and
Speaker 2: start reciting it in order to protect you from the
Speaker 2: evils on the screen.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's like the Tingler. It's like you have to
Speaker 1: scream in the theater to protect yourself from the Tingler
Speaker 1: getting you. But in this case there are words you
Speaker 1: got to yeah, or not memorized. You can read off
Speaker 1: the cards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you really are concerned, you can
Speaker 2: memorize it. But yeah, I wish, we wish we did
Speaker 2: more things like this going to the There are all
Speaker 2: these bells and whistles with going to the theater, and
Speaker 2: theaters are doing, you know, all sorts of things to
Speaker 2: keep theaters going as they should. I think it's an
Speaker 2: important part of of the the film viewing experience. But
Speaker 2: we need we need more gimmicks like this. We need
Speaker 2: protective amulets, we need you know, death clauses. I don't know,
Speaker 2: all the bells.
Speaker 1: And whistles, smellovision, Yeah, bring back smell vision. Okay. Were
Speaker 1: you able to find any good trailer audio for this one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a little bit here. This is a this
Speaker 2: is a US trailer. I guess this is the A
Speaker 2: I P trailer. Uh so, let's hear a little bit
Speaker 2: from this. It does have some nice old fashioned narration.
Speaker 2: Maybe we won't listen to the whole thing, we'll just
Speaker 2: listen to a little bit.
Speaker 3: Anguish and terror are powerful words, but more than words,
Speaker 3: the chill language of living images shows that The Mask
Speaker 3: of Satan is a picture of unparalleled emotion, but it
Speaker 3: hards a tale of a strange, dark fascination set in
Speaker 3: a spine chilling atmosphere of fear.
Speaker 1: Fear.
Speaker 4: It's death.
Speaker 3: I've just seen death, suspense in the unexpected, combined to
Speaker 3: create an impression beyond any imagination, of an indescribable fantasy,
Speaker 3: coupled with an unmeasurable reality.
Speaker 4: Ah, but it's impossible. Father, he moved, even spoke to me,
Speaker 4: then he ran away.
Speaker 3: Sometimes Satan, with his capacity for doing evil, even plays
Speaker 3: tricks with the dead.
Speaker 2: All right, So if you would like to jump out
Speaker 2: and watch Black Sunday for the first time, or just
Speaker 2: to refresh yourself before continuing on with this episode, or
Speaker 2: you want to look up look it up after listening
Speaker 2: to the whole episode, that's also okay. Well, I think
Speaker 2: the most important Well, there are two things that are
Speaker 2: important to realize about it. First of all, it is
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty Black Sunday film you want to defind,
Speaker 2: not the Black Sunday film about the blimp. That's a
Speaker 2: different picture entirely and has nothing to do with vampire's
Speaker 2: or satanic worship.
Speaker 1: I've never seen that with like a crime thriller?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 1: John Frankenheimer.
Speaker 2: I know it's what is based on Thomas Harris book,
Speaker 2: but it's not one of the Thomas Harris books that
Speaker 2: I ever read. Maybe Thomas Harris was a co author
Speaker 2: on that one. I'm a little foggy on it, but
Speaker 2: it does not contain witches. So that's your first step.
Speaker 2: Make sure you're watching the right Black Sunday. And then
Speaker 2: on top of that, there have been a few different releases.
Speaker 2: There's that American International Pictures cut of the film that
Speaker 2: was originally released in the US, and I believe that
Speaker 2: one cut down eighty seven minutes of screen time to
Speaker 2: eighty three, cutting out a little bit of gore, a
Speaker 2: little bit of sexuality, also adding in different dubbing and
Speaker 2: a different score. More details on that in a minute.
Speaker 2: It was released as The Mask of Satan, which I
Speaker 2: think is actually the translation of the original Italian title,
Speaker 2: and there have been at least two other versions released
Speaker 2: as well, including a UK Revenge of the Vampire release.
Speaker 2: Not a good title, I'm gonna go ahead and say,
Speaker 2: but yeah, a lot of American viewers grew up with
Speaker 2: that AIP version and it has an important place in
Speaker 2: their heart. But I think the more widely available version
Speaker 2: right now, especially via streaming, is an eighty seven minute
Speaker 2: cut restored from the original camera negative, and I believe
Speaker 2: this is the version with the original Italian score and
Speaker 2: the original English audio that was recorded in Rome, as
Speaker 2: opposed to the AIP audio. But going back and forth
Speaker 2: on some of these details, I was a little bit
Speaker 2: confused about which version I saw and heard, because I
Speaker 2: don't know. It's like they as we'll discuss, there are
Speaker 2: these two distinct scores, but it's not like a legend
Speaker 2: situation where one is Tangerine Dream and one isn't, and
Speaker 2: therefore you can hear a startling difference between the two.
Speaker 2: It's perhaps more of a subtle difference between the two score,
Speaker 2: but one you know, certainly more you can see where
Speaker 2: less Baxter's score was maybe a little more palpable for
Speaker 2: the American audience. But the eighty seven minute version that
Speaker 2: I watched, I believe this is also the version is
Speaker 2: sometimes called the international version, the one that's currently widely
Speaker 2: available from Shout Screen Factory via their Black Sunday Collector's edition,
Speaker 2: also their Mario Bava Collection box set, and outside the US.
Speaker 2: I think Aro has also put out a nice blu
Speaker 2: ray of this as well. But just look for the
Speaker 2: eighty seven minutes. I think if you get the eighty
Speaker 2: seven minute version, you're going to get all the good stuff.
Speaker 2: You're going to get the right amount of gore, and
Speaker 2: you're going to get as far as the sexuality, it's
Speaker 2: like there's a single kiss in the film that I
Speaker 2: believe was cut out that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It's not the sexiest film in.
Speaker 2: History, no, but it was maybe a little too sexy
Speaker 2: for nineteen sixties America.
Speaker 1: Regarding the score, I actually meant to check out the
Speaker 1: Less Baxter score to make sure that wasn't the one
Speaker 1: that I heard. I don't think it was, but I'm
Speaker 1: intra in that from what I've read, the Less Baxter
Speaker 1: score is actually considered more bombastic and kind of like
Speaker 1: high energy, and the Italian score is thought to be
Speaker 1: more subtle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's my understanding as well. And interestingly enough, it's
Speaker 2: the exact same individuals involved with the score of sixty
Speaker 2: three's Black Sabbath. So the original score is by Italian
Speaker 2: jazz band leader Roberto Nicolosi, who lived nineteen fourteen through
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, and then it's Less Baxter, who lived
Speaker 2: on the American version twenty two through ninety six, the
Speaker 2: King of Exotica and also later a dabbler in minimal
Speaker 2: electronic synth scoring. We have discussed him multiple times in
Speaker 2: the show before I've listened. I tried to compare a
Speaker 2: little bit, and yeah, I did get a sense that
Speaker 2: Baxter's score is a little bit more brassy, you know,
Speaker 2: and a little bit more in your face. But also,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't know, I'm I think I wouldn't
Speaker 2: really have paid that much attention. I feel like either
Speaker 2: score is probably pretty good.
Speaker 1: All right, we talked about the connections.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess we did skip ahead and went
Speaker 2: ahead and talked about the music. So we'll come back
Speaker 2: to the top and talk just a little bit about
Speaker 2: Mario Bava, the director, the cinematographer on this one. He
Speaker 2: lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen eighty. We've discussed him before,
Speaker 2: legendary Italian director with an unmistakable just obsessive, fadantasmagorical emphasis
Speaker 2: on visual composition. Even already you were talking about this
Speaker 2: is a film in which the casket has a window
Speaker 2: in it. Yes, And I think that's such a great
Speaker 2: Mario Bava touch, because I feel like any film that
Speaker 2: I see of his, there is a fascination with, or
Speaker 2: even an obsession with portals and windows and doors, seeing
Speaker 2: things through other things, through other frames. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so yeah, you see a lot of that in his work.
Speaker 2: This is a guy who took it all very seriously.
Speaker 2: So he'd worked as a cinematographer, special effects artist and
Speaker 2: co director for decades at this point, but again, this
Speaker 2: was his first solo directorial credit in nineteen sixty He
Speaker 2: previously worked on several films by Italian production company Galatea,
Speaker 2: and this was his chance to make a film aimed
Speaker 2: at the foreign market, a gothic horror film patterned on
Speaker 2: the recent success of Terrence Fisher's Dracula in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, So this is kind of a response to
Speaker 1: early Hammer exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, early, yeah. Those early Hammer films were making a
Speaker 2: lot of money, and so the studios like, let's do it,
Speaker 2: let's get in on this action.
Speaker 1: Baba, turn it up, turn up, yeah, turn it up
Speaker 1: to eleven.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. So Baba got to pick the story, and
Speaker 2: he made his choice, reportedly based on a scary bedtime
Speaker 2: story that he had read to his own children, This
Speaker 2: being v by Nikolai Gogel, which had already been adapted
Speaker 2: for film as early as nineteen oh nine in What
Speaker 2: Was I'm to Understand, the first Russian horror film, a
Speaker 2: short silent picture, and would also later be adapted more
Speaker 2: notably in nineteen sixty seven in a film of the
Speaker 2: same name, Black Sunday, however, is ultimately only loosely based
Speaker 2: on that Gogle story. Bava, apparently, as I alluded to,
Speaker 2: already had the chance to film this one in technicolor,
Speaker 2: but pushed for black and white. He said, you know,
Speaker 2: this is going to be the better fit. This is
Speaker 2: going to fit the mood. This is Gothic horr. It
Speaker 2: needs to be black and white.
Speaker 1: I think it's a good choice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also has apparently he did some uncredited work
Speaker 2: on the screenplay. He also did paintings and matte paintings
Speaker 2: and special effects for the picture, just as is often
Speaker 2: the case, hyper involved in the visuals. And I should
Speaker 2: also point out that Mario Bava was the son of
Speaker 2: cinematographer and special effects artist Eugeniobava, who lived eighteen eighty
Speaker 2: six through nineteen sixty six, who is credited on this
Speaker 2: film as sculptor of masks and faces.
Speaker 1: Oh, I wonder if that includes the titular in some versions,
Speaker 1: mask of Satan.
Speaker 2: That is I assume that has to be the case. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right. There are some additional screenplay play credits, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to focus on the ones that are definitely credited. Here.
Speaker 2: We have screenplay credit to Eneo di Concini, who lived
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three through two thousand and eight Italian writer,
Speaker 2: director and producer, whose other scripts include nineteen sixty three's
Speaker 2: Divorce Italian Style, which earned him and his co writers
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixty three Oscar for Best Writing Story and
Speaker 2: Screenplay written directly for the screen. Other scripts include fifty
Speaker 2: six is War in Peace, sixty three's The Girl who
Speaker 2: Knew Too Much, sixty nine is The Red Tense, seventy
Speaker 2: six is Salon Kitty, and seventy eight's Just a Jigglow
Speaker 2: that's the David Bowie film, among many others.
Speaker 1: I was about to say that I thought The Girl
Speaker 1: who Knew Too Much was another Mario Bava film that
Speaker 1: I'd seen more of, a Jallo style film, also in
Speaker 1: black and white. But then I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: or am I confusing that with another movie called The
Speaker 1: Evil Eye. I guess I was, and I wasn't, because
Speaker 1: they're different cuts of the same movie known by different titles.
Speaker 2: Oh man, yeah, I haven't seen this one. This one
Speaker 2: is John Saxon in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. John Saxon plays an Italian hunk, so the main
Speaker 1: character in it is an American tourist played by Letitia
Speaker 1: Ramon who she's in Rome and she witnesses a murderer
Speaker 1: I think, and then believes that somebody's coming after her,
Speaker 1: so she's running around Rome trying to do murder investigation.
Speaker 1: I don't know, It's been a little while since I've
Speaker 1: seen it, so I forgot some of the details. But
Speaker 1: John Saxon is the local honk who she ends up
Speaker 1: having a romance with.
Speaker 2: I need to see that one. I mean, I have
Speaker 2: to put that one on the list. Let's see another
Speaker 2: screenplay credit goes to Mario Serre, who have nineteen oh
Speaker 2: seven through nineteen sixty six, a film editor who worked
Speaker 2: with Bava on several films I believe, including this one
Speaker 2: and the excellent nineteen sixty four Blood and Black Lace.
Speaker 2: But he was also an occasional writer. And then on
Speaker 2: top of that, we have George Higgins nineteen seventeen through
Speaker 2: two thousand and five credited with English dialogue. I'm a
Speaker 2: little now, I have to stress, I'm a little uncertain
Speaker 2: of we're dealing with the original English dub recorded in
Speaker 2: Rome or the AIP dub at any rate. He was
Speaker 2: an American writer, actor, and voice dubber so yeah. Of note,
Speaker 2: it's my understanding that everyone is dubbed here, even the
Speaker 2: English language actors in the English language dub.
Speaker 1: Feels that way, all the dialogue feels dubbed. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know this as was the custom at the end,
Speaker 1: as was the custom, yeah, regarding films that were presented
Speaker 1: with a you know, international cast for international release. But
Speaker 1: also even as we've.
Speaker 2: Discussed before, like you'll have Spanish films for a Spanish
Speaker 2: audience and everybody's dubbed anyway, because that's just how you
Speaker 2: did it. Yeah, all right, let's get into the cast here.
Speaker 2: I was starting with Barber Steele. We've already been talking
Speaker 2: about her. Born nineteen thirty seven, and as of this
Speaker 2: recording still with us, has the dual role here, playing
Speaker 2: Princess Oza Vida and Katia Vida again dual role. Barbara
Speaker 2: Steele is an English actress who, yeah, can't help but
Speaker 2: be best remembered for this film. It was only her
Speaker 2: ninth screen credit, occurring during just the first few years
Speaker 2: of her film career, but it helped to cement her
Speaker 2: status as one of the original screen queens and ultimately
Speaker 2: a familiar face in Gothic horror for decades. Subsequent films
Speaker 2: include some big ones here sixty ones, The Pit and
Speaker 2: the Pendulum. This is a Corman price po film. We
Speaker 2: haven't talked about this one yet, but we may well
Speaker 2: get to it here on Weird House Cinema in the future.
Speaker 1: I believe she plays a deceased character in this who's
Speaker 1: like a phantom, a spectral kind of character who appears
Speaker 1: in visions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean she you know, she created a
Speaker 2: type for herself here. Yeah, let's see. There's also sixty
Speaker 2: two's The Horrible Doctor Hitchcock. Oh, and then there's sixty
Speaker 2: threes eight and a half. That's the Fellini film, sixty
Speaker 2: threes The Ghost, sixty four's Castle of Blood.
Speaker 1: I just watched that one for the first time a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago. Yeah, that one also has a lot
Speaker 1: going for it. It's a very very strong black and
Speaker 1: white Gothic cinematography, you know, all the same kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: ruined castles, candelabras, that sort of thing. That one, I
Speaker 1: will offer a bit of criticism in that it truly
Speaker 1: is quite slow moving. There are some parts where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, even I, who really I enjoy bathing in
Speaker 1: this kind of texture, but like you are walking too
Speaker 1: slow as you approach the coffin. You could be moving faster.
Speaker 2: Let's see a few other titles include sixty four is
Speaker 2: The Long Hair of Death, sixty fives Terror Creatures from
Speaker 2: the Grave, sixty six's She Beast, sixty eight's The Crimson Cult,
Speaker 2: and then later on in your career, we have Voked
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five Shivers, the David Cronenberg film, seventy eight's Piranha,
Speaker 2: that's the Jodante film about killer Fish. And then very
Speaker 2: late in her career here she did a voice acting
Speaker 2: role in the twenty twenty Castlevania series. Oh. I only
Speaker 2: watched a little of that, but it has a great
Speaker 2: voice cast. For sure.
Speaker 1: I did not even know that existed. But I'm glad
Speaker 1: if somebody was making a Castlevania adaptation and their voice casting,
Speaker 1: it's like, let's call it Barbara Steel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's like that gets the six budget, let's do it. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Her last IMDb credit was twenty twenty three. TV credits
Speaker 2: from throughout her career include Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Original
Speaker 2: Night Gallery, and the nineteen nineties Dark Shadows series.
Speaker 1: So, like you said, Rob she's got a dual role here.
Speaker 1: She's playing both a good character and a bad character,
Speaker 1: the main villain of the film and the young princess
Speaker 1: who's sort of the target or the victim who is
Speaker 1: being being attacked attacked for her life force by this ancestor.
Speaker 1: And she's good in both roles. But she I think
Speaker 1: especially excels when playing the witch. It's like it's I
Speaker 1: said this earlier, but it is unreal the kind of evil,
Speaker 1: malevolent faces that she manages to make for the camera here.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she just does a terrific job here, great, haunting, intense,
Speaker 2: dual performance. So she's undeniably the star. But if we
Speaker 2: have a protagonist, really, I guess it is doctor Andre
Speaker 2: gorbec Our. This is our handsome doctor character who is
Speaker 2: going to be venturing into the world of the supernatural
Speaker 2: and hopefully surviving it.
Speaker 1: He's the love interest. Yeah, yeah, he's the handsome guy
Speaker 1: who shows up in town to you know, like she
Speaker 1: needs a hunk in her life, and here he is.
Speaker 2: Yes, played by John Richardson, who lived nineteen thirty four
Speaker 2: through twenty twenty one English leading man actor, best known
Speaker 2: for such films as sixty five. She nineteen fifty six
Speaker 2: is one million Years BC. That's a caveman movie, and
Speaker 2: you you may recognize him more from this in the
Speaker 2: posters and publicity shots for this where he has the
Speaker 2: big shaggy hair and the big full beard. Let's see
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies On a clear day, you can see Forever
Speaker 2: and nineteen seventy seven's War of the Planets. He also
Speaker 2: had a late career appearance as the architect in the
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine Italian horror film The Church.
Speaker 1: Oh is that the one by Suave?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, Oh, that's one that I have a lot
Speaker 2: of fondness for, but I haven't seen in a while.
Speaker 2: But it very much at the time felt like a
Speaker 2: sort of horror, a very well done horrshlock cinema response
Speaker 2: to the Name of the Rose features some of the
Speaker 2: same actors.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'd almost say that I hadn't thought of it
Speaker 1: till now, But that's a candidate for next week.
Speaker 2: Oh okay. So Richardson worked quite a bit in Italian
Speaker 2: genre cinema. Two other films of note includes seventy three's
Speaker 2: Torso and seventy five's Eyeball. I guess all the rest
Speaker 2: of the body parts He didn't get around, but he
Speaker 2: got Torso and eyeball out there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he lean the motion picture.
Speaker 2: It's clean. He was reportedly up for the Bond role
Speaker 2: that ultimately went to George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's
Speaker 2: Secret Service in nineteen sixty nine. So he's that sort
Speaker 2: of actor, you know, handsome British leading man sort and
Speaker 2: so in this film. Yeah, predictably, you know, he is
Speaker 2: a solid leading man in this film. He's not he
Speaker 2: doesn't do anything amazingly out of the ordinary, but he
Speaker 2: does a really good job at what he does.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mentioned earlier that I think the acting in
Speaker 1: this movie is mostly good. I would say if there
Speaker 1: is a weak link, I think it's in some of
Speaker 1: the dialogue delivery by this guy, though I actually I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's actually John Richardson. I think that
Speaker 1: would be whoever's dubbing him sometimes has some kind of
Speaker 1: dull line deliveries that. Yeah, I don't know what Richardson
Speaker 1: himself actually actually sounded like, but his visual presence on
Speaker 1: screen is good.
Speaker 2: I'll also note that I have it was a little
Speaker 2: surreal watching this guy. I'm not gonna be so vain
Speaker 2: as to say that I look really all that much
Speaker 2: like classically handsome British actor John Richardson, but at certain angles,
Speaker 2: like watching this on the airplane, I was thrown off
Speaker 2: a little bit because he would he would look enough
Speaker 2: like me, at least in some profile shots that I
Speaker 2: kind of got that uncanny looking at myself in photos
Speaker 2: feeling oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you told me this, and I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: caught that myself just watching the film, but after you
Speaker 1: said it, I could see it. I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's rob.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but in like in a weird way, like
Speaker 2: that's not actually me and I'm not supposed to be
Speaker 2: in the horror movie. So it probably added like an
Speaker 2: extra like personal creep factor to the viewing of the film.
Speaker 2: But it only applies to people who look more or
Speaker 2: less like like me.
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 2: Let's let's move on to the rest of the cast.
Speaker 1: Though.
Speaker 2: We also have the character of Krubyon. Professor Krubion. This
Speaker 2: one I know how to pronounce because they say this
Speaker 2: name so many times in the picture. Everyone's looking for
Speaker 2: Crubian and they are calling for him through ruins, through castles,
Speaker 2: out in the field, you name it.
Speaker 1: He gets name checked a lot, yes.
Speaker 2: And he is played by the Italian actor Andrea Kecki
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen sixteen through nineteen seventy four. Italian Award
Speaker 2: winning actor who was pretty prolific, yet this is one
Speaker 2: of only two horror films he ever did, the other
Speaker 2: being the bizarre sounding nineteen sixty four War of the
Speaker 2: Zombies that seems to have Roman centurions battling the undead,
Speaker 2: a rare additional example of horror peplam, but one that's
Speaker 2: not as celebrated as Baba's Hercules in The Haunted World.
Speaker 1: Sounds more like a movie that would have been made
Speaker 1: in the past decade. Yeah, from nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's kind of crazy to think that this
Speaker 2: here we have an early example of a zombie film
Speaker 2: that feels like a more recent like you know, zombie
Speaker 2: over exposure pictures.
Speaker 1: So fascinating, Maybe not the past ticket actually, yeah, it
Speaker 1: sounds like a movie that came directed to DVD in
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly where it would be. All right,
Speaker 2: let's look at other cast members here. Let's see. Oh
Speaker 2: we have we have Prince Vida, played by Ivo Gharani
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty four through twenty fifteen Italian actor
Speaker 2: whose other credits include fifty eighth, The Day This Guy Exploded,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties, adam Age Vampire seventy seven, Holocaust two thousand
Speaker 2: and the Year two thousand, zor the Vampire, as well
Speaker 2: as numerous Italian historical dramas that I'm sure are much
Speaker 2: better than the schlock that caught my eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy's good and that he's you know, he's
Speaker 1: an actor with I would say, physically robust presence, Like
Speaker 1: he looks like somebody who's like strong and healthy, but
Speaker 1: he manages through his performance to convey that he is
Speaker 1: shriveled and weakened by the way that he has been
Speaker 1: haunted by the knowledge of this curse in his family.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely a haunted figure, but not as haunted in
Speaker 2: another way as the next character, and that is Igor Javuch.
Speaker 2: This is our Satanic warlock and ultimately I guess kind
Speaker 2: of like vampire underling of our central vampire princess.
Speaker 1: Yes, the lover and the servant of the witch Asavaida.
Speaker 1: So he is interesting in rob I wonder if you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. In some shots he goes in
Speaker 1: within the same shot from looking a little bit funny
Speaker 1: to looking scary. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he like his
Speaker 1: look is not naturally menacing. He almost has a kind
Speaker 1: of like he could be a comic actor with the
Speaker 1: mustache and the haircut and stuff. But he, like the
Speaker 1: stare goes on a little bit too long, and then
Speaker 1: it hardens, and then he moves towards you and it
Speaker 1: has this extra chilling effect for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's ultimately a great presence and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: of course this guy fell into worshiping the devil. But
Speaker 2: played here by Ortruro Dominici, who lived nineteen sixteen through
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, Italian actor who worked in numerous Peplam films,
Speaker 2: as well as sixty fourth Castle of Blood. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you remember him from Castle of Blood or not.
Speaker 1: I don't remember who he was in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's also in fifty nine's Caltiki The Immortal Monster.
Speaker 2: This is the black and white Italian Mayan blob movie
Speaker 2: that Mario Bava served as cinematographer on and also co directed.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 2: It's been on my list because it's supposed to be
Speaker 2: interest I mean, how can you not be interested? In
Speaker 2: a black and white blob movie with like Mayan elements
Speaker 2: involved in it, that is co directed by Mario Pava.
Speaker 1: Yeah, has my attention?
Speaker 2: All right, we have another character of note, and that's
Speaker 2: Constantine Vaida, and he has Enrico Oliveri. He lived nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty nine through twenty twenty two, Italian actor who did
Speaker 2: it a little more than a dozen pictures, and this
Speaker 2: was seemingly his only horror film and also one of
Speaker 2: his last. I'm to understand he retired from acting and
Speaker 2: became an accountant. Oh okay, Yeah, sometimes that's as boring
Speaker 2: and as every day as the story needs to be.
Speaker 1: Okay, are you ready to talk about the plot?
Speaker 2: Let's jump into Let's jump into the fire.
Speaker 1: That's right. We open on a fire, in fact, a
Speaker 1: big roasting fire in a brazier in the center of
Speaker 1: a dark field with dead trees all around, and the
Speaker 1: air is full of smoke. That there is a menacing
Speaker 1: figure in a black executioner's hood, a shirtless and muscle
Speaker 1: bound with leather bracers on his wrists, and he's turning
Speaker 1: an iron brand in the fire pit. And then we
Speaker 1: get voiceover. Narration says in the seventeenth century, Satan was
Speaker 1: abroad on the earth, and great was the wrath against
Speaker 1: those monstrous beings thirsty for human blood, to whom tradition
Speaker 1: has given the name of vampires. No appeal for pity
Speaker 1: or mercy availed.
Speaker 2: All right, there you go, vampires from the good go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think that's talking about the punishers of
Speaker 1: vampires that know no pity or mercy availed. If you
Speaker 1: made it like have mercy on the vampires, it's like,
Speaker 1: no nothing doing, because it goes without saying that. You know,
Speaker 1: there's no mercy from the vampires themselves.
Speaker 2: Right right. It would be a little more complicated if that.
Speaker 1: Were the fact. So here the camera pans over and
Speaker 1: we see more hooded muscle boys looking on, and then
Speaker 1: more figures lined up behind the branches of these dead trees.
Speaker 1: These guys are wearing black robes from head to toe.
Speaker 1: Their faces are shrouded in black with little slits over
Speaker 1: their eyes to look out, and they were holding toes,
Speaker 1: and the narration continues. Brothers did not hesitate to accuse brothers,
Speaker 1: and fathers accused sons in the frantic attempt to purify
Speaker 1: the earth of that horrible race of blood devouring assassins,
Speaker 1: and now we see the whole scene in frame. The
Speaker 1: hooded inquisitors, they stand in a great mass in the
Speaker 1: field between the bare trees. They're holding up torches in
Speaker 1: the light, and before them are two prisoners, one man
Speaker 1: and one woman, bound to large wooden pillars, and the
Speaker 1: narrator says, before putting them to death, human justice anticipated
Speaker 1: divine judgment by burning into the flesh of those damned
Speaker 1: ones the brand of Satan. And then here we see
Speaker 1: the executioner approach the woman with the iron that he
Speaker 1: had been turning in the fire. He holds it up
Speaker 1: away from his body and then he plunges it against
Speaker 1: the flesh of the woman's back, and we get a
Speaker 1: close up of the scar. And I was thinking, what's
Speaker 1: it going to be? Is it gonna be a pentagram
Speaker 1: and inverted cross? It is a big letter s I
Speaker 1: think for Satan, like property of Satan.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, maybe that was just a brand they
Speaker 2: already had ready to go. They didn't really have time
Speaker 2: in their persecution of devil worshippers to really create a
Speaker 2: brand new brand, and then they had to stick to it.
Speaker 2: You know, you want it to be consistent across your brandings.
Speaker 1: Nasty effect too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this looks super gross. This is definitely the
Speaker 2: scene where I was thankful for the black and white.
Speaker 2: Did not need to see this in a thousand colors.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, after the branding, the woman who's tied to
Speaker 1: the pillar, she turns to look at her captors and
Speaker 1: it's Barbara Steel. She is pale, with long dark hair
Speaker 1: and these wide, intense eyes. And one of the inquisitors says, Asa,
Speaker 1: daughter of the House of Vida, this High Court of
Speaker 1: the Inquisition of Moldavia has declared you guilty. I, the
Speaker 1: second born son of Prince Vida, as grand and Quisitor,
Speaker 1: do condemn you, and as your brother, I repudiate you.
Speaker 2: Too.
Speaker 1: Many evil deeds have you done to satisfy your monstrous
Speaker 1: love for that surf of the devil igor Yavooditch. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm almost getting a little feeling of horror
Speaker 1: rizes from the tomb about this a you know, a
Speaker 1: cursed witch and warlock power couple who are being sentenced
Speaker 1: to death by the Inquisition hundreds of years ago because
Speaker 1: not only did they do things for Satan, they did
Speaker 1: things for Satan for each other. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: love that made them drink blood.
Speaker 2: You know. I would imagine that this film was one
Speaker 2: of the key influences on Paul Nashi for horror rises
Speaker 2: from the Tomb. There's another example we'll get to here
Speaker 2: in a minute where you can see a clear connection
Speaker 2: between Black Sunday and the Gothic imagination of Paul Nashi.
Speaker 1: Totally. Yeah. I don't know if it's the same one
Speaker 1: you have in mind. I do, but I was thinking
Speaker 1: of one as well. But anyway, so here we see
Speaker 1: the other prisoner, Yavudich, the one they just talked about.
Speaker 1: This is the man condemned with her. He's tied to
Speaker 1: a pillory and some kind of hideous bronze mask with
Speaker 1: a large nose, a grotesque mouth with a forked tongue,
Speaker 1: and a big fin running down from the forehead down
Speaker 1: the middle of the fight face to the nose. I
Speaker 1: assume this is one of the masks made by Mario
Speaker 1: Baba's dad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And it looks incredible, you know, definitely in
Speaker 2: its design nearors a lot of the European devil masks,
Speaker 2: and also some of the devil masks that you would
Speaker 2: see in parts of Central and South America that were
Speaker 2: influenced by European traditions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the brother says, may God have pity on
Speaker 1: your soul in this your final hour, cover her face
Speaker 1: with the mask of Satan. And what's this, Well, she's
Speaker 1: about to get her own metal mask, just like her accomplice.
Speaker 1: And so we see another mask like the first. It's
Speaker 1: lying in the dead grass, and the inquisitor says, nail
Speaker 1: it down. May the cleansing flames reduce her foul body
Speaker 1: to ashes, so that the wind will obliterate all trace
Speaker 1: of her existence. Then we see an executioner lift the
Speaker 1: mask up from the grass and we see inside the mask,
Speaker 1: the inside face of it, and it is an Iron
Speaker 1: Maiden mask. So the inside of the mask is all
Speaker 1: pointy nails turned toward the face.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, ghastly yes, And I was looking into this
Speaker 2: a little bit. This mask was seemingly very much an
Speaker 2: invention of Mario Baba's or the Bava's father and son
Speaker 2: in general, though clearly based on first of all, the
Speaker 2: you know Iron Maiden fictions I think we've discussed in
Speaker 2: the show before. The Iron Maiden is one of those
Speaker 2: artifacts that did not originally actually seem to exist as
Speaker 2: a physical torture or execution device, though that may have
Speaker 2: changed much later in its history as people were inspired
Speaker 2: by its design. You do have various face shackles from
Speaker 2: throughout the history of human torture and punishment. You know there,
Speaker 2: you know, sometimes you know, some sort of thing that
Speaker 2: was locked on the head to to mock the individual. Yeah, scolds,
Speaker 2: bridles and the like. And then there's also a bit
Speaker 2: of the man in the iron mask to this side. Imagine.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a pretty big literary footprint to ignore.
Speaker 2: But what a creation. Yes, this mask is just incredible,
Speaker 2: and the way it's presented, I mean, this whole opening
Speaker 2: sequence is just incredible. Like there's you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of these older films that we watch, you can you
Speaker 2: can easily imagine people walking out during the opening sequence
Speaker 2: because sometimes they can take it takes a little while
Speaker 2: to get going. But this one is just off to
Speaker 2: the races right away, and it's just brutal in its execution,
Speaker 2: I mean literal excuse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the executioner comes up to the witch, to
Speaker 1: Barber Steele, and he's holding the mask outstretched to ASA's
Speaker 1: face and we see from her perspective as like the
Speaker 1: mask is sort of lowered down over the camera and ooh,
Speaker 1: it's it's shocking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely terrifying sequence here is that mask is is
Speaker 2: lowered into place, and we the viewer are in the
Speaker 2: are experiencing it. We have the POV shot of the
Speaker 2: of the spiked mask of Satan closing over us. And
Speaker 2: I can only assume that this sequence helped inform a
Speaker 2: key moment in Revenge of the Sith. There's the sequence
Speaker 2: towards the end of that where the mask of Darth
Speaker 2: Vader is closed over Anakin's face for the first time,
Speaker 2: and and it's it's a terrifying visual in Revenge of
Speaker 2: the Sith. I think it's often overlooked in the evaluation
Speaker 2: of the film's final moment. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of fun is made of the no moment.
Speaker 2: You know, once he is fully Darth Vader, but that
Speaker 2: moment where the Vader mask is being lowered onto his
Speaker 2: face and we see through Anakin's eyes and we see
Speaker 2: his world change as it comes to encase him. I
Speaker 2: think it's a really haunting moment, and I think it
Speaker 2: had to have been inspired by this moment in Black
Speaker 2: Sunday that.
Speaker 1: Seems quite likely to me strange connection. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: no from Revenge of the Sith. The very next thing,
Speaker 1: barbar Steele says when they lower the mask over her
Speaker 1: face as she screams no.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's the thing about the whole no thing
Speaker 2: is like people scream no a lot in films, certainly
Speaker 2: the films I end up saying. And sometimes it works,
Speaker 2: sometimes it doesn't, And sometimes it's hard to decide exactly
Speaker 2: why it works and why it doesn't work, you know.
Speaker 2: I guess it comes down to the nuances of performance
Speaker 2: and how everything's shot. But also sometimes it just seems
Speaker 2: to be like a case of yeah, it worked there,
Speaker 2: I buy it. In other cases and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: it feels a little hokey.
Speaker 1: So in this case, after shouting no, Barbara Steele says
Speaker 1: to her brother Griabi, that's his name. It is I
Speaker 1: who repudiate you, and in the name of Satan, I
Speaker 1: place a curse upon you. Go ahead, tie me down
Speaker 1: to the steak, but you will never escape my hunger,
Speaker 1: nor that of Satan. And then lightning strikes and we
Speaker 1: hear her say, the unchained elements of the powers of
Speaker 1: Darkness are lying in ambush. Beware Griabi. My revenge will
Speaker 1: strike down you and your accursed house, and in the
Speaker 1: blood of your sons and the sons of their sons,
Speaker 1: I will continue to live immortal. They shall restore to
Speaker 1: me the life that you rob from me. I shall
Speaker 1: return to torment and destroy throughout the night of time.
Speaker 2: It's quite a curse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, as she's saying this last part, the executioners fix.
Speaker 1: They fixed the spiked mask against her face and then,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the big guy executioner he approaches with
Speaker 1: a huge wooden mallet and he draws back and on
Speaker 1: the command of the inquisitor, he hammers the mask.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, this is just absolutely brutal. And this
Speaker 2: is another moment where the gore is not over the
Speaker 2: top but just highly effective.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we hear the princess scream and then dark
Speaker 1: blood trickles out from every hole in the face of
Speaker 1: the mask, and the music swells and we see the
Speaker 1: title the Mask of Satan, though now, of course the
Speaker 1: movie is more often known as Black Sunday.
Speaker 2: Again, an incredible sequence here, and it would go on
Speaker 2: to influence various other weird execution masks in horror cinema.
Speaker 2: To go back to Paul Nashy, there's the mask of
Speaker 2: Shame that his Voldemar Doninski wears in nineteen eighties Night
Speaker 2: of the Werewolf as part of his execution.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and another one, ooh, this is I think another
Speaker 2: clear connection. We have the powerful warlock Nix in Clive
Speaker 2: Barker's nineteen ninety five film Lord of Illusions, a great
Speaker 2: performance by Daniel von Bargin as the Warlock. That mask
Speaker 2: can be the Knicks mask seems especially based on the
Speaker 2: Mask of Satan, because the warlock in that film, once
Speaker 2: he's freed of it, he bears the scars, like intense
Speaker 2: scarification from where the mask had been locked in place.
Speaker 1: I've actually never seen Lord of Illusions.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's been a long time since I've seen it,
Speaker 2: but I remember it having some great elements to it.
Speaker 2: It's a tremendous undead warlock character, for sure. I was
Speaker 2: also reading It's been a long time since I've seen
Speaker 2: this film either. But Tim Burton's sweepy Hollow from nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine begins with a sequence that features not a
Speaker 2: mask of Satan but an actual Iron Maiden, and I
Speaker 2: believe in interviews Tim Burton has pointed directly to Black
Speaker 2: Sunday as an inspiration on that.
Speaker 1: Sequence, That wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so again, amazing opening already. I mean, it would
Speaker 2: be difficult to screw this up, and as we all know,
Speaker 2: Mario Obava is not going to screw up Sunday. It
Speaker 2: is a classic. It is often considered the grandfather of
Speaker 2: Italian horror cinema.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I still remember actually the first time I saw
Speaker 1: this movie, how strong of an effect the opening had
Speaker 1: on me. It's it's great. So, of course, after this
Speaker 1: we get the credits, and then after the credits play,
Speaker 1: we sort of pick up where we left off. Asa
Speaker 1: and Yavoudich are dead, but just when the inquisitors are
Speaker 1: setting about to burn their bodies with the purifying flame
Speaker 1: that they talked about, a rainstorm breaks out, as if
Speaker 1: by command of the devil, and it quenches all of
Speaker 1: their fires. So instead, the body of Yavoodich is buried
Speaker 1: in the graveyard, but covered in unconsecrated earth, in the
Speaker 1: place reserved for murderers. So I like that this graveyard
Speaker 1: has an exclusive murderers when you got to bury him somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then Asa is buried in her family tomb and
Speaker 1: like the family's chapel along with her ancestors.
Speaker 2: Because again her burning it was rained out, and they're like, well,
Speaker 2: what are we going to do? I thought we were
Speaker 2: gonna have her burn and her ashes are you know,
Speaker 2: distributed by the winds, and they're like, well, it's raining,
Speaker 2: let's just bury.
Speaker 1: This is like this in this, like that story of
Speaker 1: Saint Switin, Like they were going to move the body,
Speaker 1: but then it just kept raining and the like must
Speaker 1: be magic. Yeah, yeah, the rain has spoken, so uh,
Speaker 1: text tells us it is now two centuries later. I
Speaker 1: think we're going from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though, as is often the case in Gothic Gara films,
Speaker 2: it's not like you're going to really see that much
Speaker 2: of the difference, except there's no longer like an active
Speaker 2: inquisition press. Yeah, that's about the main difference.
Speaker 1: So the action reopens with a horse drawn carriage clattering
Speaker 1: through a crossroads. This is in the countryside of Moldavia,
Speaker 1: which would be I believe, in modern day Romaine. The
Speaker 1: passengers are two medical doctors. The elder is doctor Choma
Speaker 1: Krubaion and his younger assistant, doctor Andre gora Beck. They
Speaker 1: are travel in cross country to make their way to
Speaker 1: a medical conference in Moscow. Goro Bec says that if
Speaker 1: they stop at the nearest town, a place called Mr. Garad, quote,
Speaker 1: we'll never be able to reach Moscow by evening. I
Speaker 1: was like, what, I don't know if they have some
Speaker 1: hidden rockets on that carriage. But I did a little math.
Speaker 1: This has got to be a roughly two thousand kilometer
Speaker 1: journey or more. They're not going to make Moscow by evening.
Speaker 1: But either way, the older doctor Krubayon is not concerned
Speaker 1: with reaching Moscow. He wants to stay the night at
Speaker 1: the inn in Mr. Garod, where they have good smoked salmon,
Speaker 1: and he says they have excellent vodka.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're very excited for this vodka. And later on,
Speaker 2: later on, we will see that the vodka here is
Speaker 2: served in like pictures at the table, like capwater is
Speaker 2: served at restaurants today.
Speaker 1: That look like water pitchers. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like there's just that much vodka. It's just there's
Speaker 2: like a stream of it here.
Speaker 1: I guess. So the difference between them, the young doctor Gorbek,
Speaker 1: he's handsome, energetic and earnest. He's keen to learn things
Speaker 1: at the conference that they're going to go to. He's
Speaker 1: gonna make himself a good physician. And then the older
Speaker 1: doctor crew Bion is a bit more seasoned. He's kindly
Speaker 1: but with a cynical sense of humor. He's like, you know,
Speaker 1: don't put too much salt in you know what you
Speaker 1: hear at medical conferences. I don't know, why are they
Speaker 1: going to a like a half scam medical conference. Crewbyon
Speaker 1: at one point calls out to their coachman to ask
Speaker 1: him to take a short cut through the woods. I
Speaker 1: guess he wants to get to that vodka faster, and
Speaker 1: the coachman tries to argue that he can't do that
Speaker 1: because the road through the forest has fallen into disrepair.
Speaker 1: It's too dangerous, and the doctor is like, nah, you're
Speaker 1: just afraid of the witch. Here's a gold coin to
Speaker 1: motivate you. And it turns out, yes, the coachman is afraid,
Speaker 1: but you know the gold coin. He wants that, so
Speaker 1: reluctantly he takes the dark road through the woods. At
Speaker 1: one point, he talks about how he fought against Napoleon
Speaker 1: when he invaded He says, I'd rather come face to
Speaker 1: face with a cursed frenchman than meet a ghost. So
Speaker 1: the woods are full of darkness and mist and yowling
Speaker 1: cackling wolves, bassoon music, and trees that reach out and
Speaker 1: try to choke your coachman, or so he claims, as
Speaker 1: he's like tucking the vodka bottle back into his vest.
Speaker 1: And eventually, as they're going through these haunted woods, there
Speaker 1: is a carriage wreck. The wheel comes off, the driver
Speaker 1: gets out to repair it, and as he does so,
Speaker 1: the two doctors go for a walk and end up
Speaker 1: investigating a nearby ruined building that is emitting strange whistling noises.
Speaker 2: And they are men of science, so what are they
Speaker 2: going to do?
Speaker 1: They're going to investigate, right, this is the Colossi have
Speaker 1: memnon or something. So they creep through the overgrown ruins
Speaker 1: until they finally come across the answer. It is an
Speaker 1: old church organ with the wind blowing through the pipes.
Speaker 1: Krubaion knocks down the pipes with his cane. The whaling stops.
Speaker 1: Oh so, logical explanation for everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fixed.
Speaker 1: But then the two doctors are startled when a nearby
Speaker 1: door slams shut seemingly on its own. It is a
Speaker 1: heavy wooden door they go to investigate, and then inside
Speaker 1: the door there is a staircase leading down into a dank,
Speaker 1: subterranean crypt underneath a chapel filled with cobwebs and deep shadows.
Speaker 1: And so the doctors descend, and Crubion says, more than
Speaker 1: a thousand years of conflicts, hates and loves, all reduced
Speaker 1: to dust. In these tombs. Nothing remains of the ancient
Speaker 1: princes of Vida, but the dead shadows of their former glory.
Speaker 1: The history of ancient Moldavia is carved in these stones.
Speaker 1: And so they approach one entombment in the crypt, and
Speaker 1: Krubion realizes that it is the grave of the famous witch.
Speaker 1: He knows the story. The sealed coffin has a glass
Speaker 1: window on the lid, as we were discussing earlier, so strange,
Speaker 1: which allows the two doctors to look inside the coffin
Speaker 1: and see below the mask of Satan, the bronze face
Speaker 1: nailed in place over the flesh face of the condemned witch.
Speaker 1: Now why is there a glass window on the coffin?
Speaker 1: While they explain uh the crew, there's a crucifix mounted
Speaker 1: on top of the coffin lid, and the belief was
Speaker 1: that by keeping the cross in the corpse's view through
Speaker 1: the glass, they could prevent the dead body from returning
Speaker 1: to life and terrorizing them once more.
Speaker 2: You could ask a lot of questions about this, like
Speaker 2: why not just put the cross on the like the
Speaker 2: inside lid of the casket. You know, I think you
Speaker 2: have to come back to the realization that this is
Speaker 2: a Bava thing, like again, fascinated by windows and apertures.
Speaker 2: So of course there's a glass panel in the top
Speaker 2: of the casket, and I guess if i'm you know,
Speaker 2: if I wanted to lean into it, I would say, well,
Speaker 2: this would also allow the viewer to check and make
Speaker 2: sure that the mask of Satan is still in place.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, actually there's another rational reason. There's no light inside
Speaker 1: a coffin, So if the corpse needs to be able
Speaker 1: to see the crucifix, it needs a window with you know,
Speaker 1: to let the light in so it can see. So
Speaker 1: if you're gonna put a window in there anyway to
Speaker 1: let the light in, why not just put the cross
Speaker 1: on the outside instead of on the inside.
Speaker 2: Well, that's true like in D and D terms, like
Speaker 2: even if the corpse comes alive again and has dark vision,
Speaker 2: it still needs some amount of light, So yeah, it
Speaker 2: totally checks out.
Speaker 1: You're right, So cru Ion is fascinated. Gorbec gets called
Speaker 1: out to help the coachman place the wheel back on
Speaker 1: the axle of the carriage. In the meantime, crub Ion
Speaker 1: is left alone in the crypt and there is a
Speaker 1: bat attack, classic Gothic horror movie bat attack. A giant
Speaker 1: bat flies out of a hole in the wall, and
Speaker 1: the good Doctor starts like swinging and bashing at it
Speaker 1: with his cane. He eventually draws a gun and shoots
Speaker 1: this little derringer pistol. Why has he got a gun?
Speaker 2: Well, for moments like this, That's why he can so
Speaker 2: confidently walk into ancient crips to check the things, check
Speaker 2: things out for science, because he's packing heat. But I
Speaker 2: like the bad attack here. You know, it's a it's
Speaker 2: a flappy bat like we see in a lot of
Speaker 2: Gothic horror films, but looks pretty darn good, as you
Speaker 2: would expect from from Mario Baba.
Speaker 1: Yes. Now, in the process of bats smashing, he inadvertently
Speaker 1: smashes the glass on the witch's coffin lid and smashes
Speaker 1: the cross on top of the grave. Uh. Oh, exactly
Speaker 1: what you shouldn't have done. So Gorbec comes back, and
Speaker 1: when Krubeon explains what happened to Gorbec is like odd
Speaker 1: bats are usually peaceful creatures. It almost says like, you know,
Speaker 1: they're more afraid of us than we are of them.
Speaker 2: Peaceful creatures is an interesting stretch, perhaps, but okay.
Speaker 1: But he also he says that they need to get
Speaker 1: back outside otherwise quote otherwise the coachman will be convinced
Speaker 1: that he's right, Like, we can't let him have that.
Speaker 1: I guess, right about what I don't know about the
Speaker 1: forest being haunted?
Speaker 2: Maybe, yeah, I guess the implication there is he might leave.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's true. Fair enough. Yeah, So we got
Speaker 1: to get back because this guy, we can't depend on him.
Speaker 1: He's getting into the vodka in the vest. So we
Speaker 1: got to go to the carriage. But Krubeon's attention is
Speaker 1: drawn to the coffin. He realizes the damage he did
Speaker 1: in his bat smashing frenzy, and he's looking at it
Speaker 1: and it's like, well, the glass is broken anyway, don't
Speaker 1: mind if I do.
Speaker 2: This was hilarious, Like, at this point we'd had a
Speaker 2: pretty logical reason for our characters to venture this far
Speaker 2: into the crypt and then interfere with the various magical
Speaker 2: protections in place here. Yes, but at this point he's like, well,
Speaker 2: I've already half violated the grave. I might as well
Speaker 2: just keep going.
Speaker 1: Yes, So first he reaches in and removes from the
Speaker 1: coffin a little triptic icon with images of a saint
Speaker 1: and some inscriptions covered in dust and cobwebs, And this
Speaker 1: will become important for the plot later. But then beyond
Speaker 1: that lies the body itself, and Curubaeon can't resist his curiosity.
Speaker 1: He reaches in and he removes the mask from the face.
Speaker 1: There is kind of some good sound design here, kind
Speaker 1: of a sucking, squelching sound as he does this, like
Speaker 1: trying to pull a boot out of mud. And then
Speaker 1: you know, it's not exactly what you would expect it
Speaker 1: to look like. After two hundred years, you would expect
Speaker 1: nothing to remain of the witch except bones. But under
Speaker 1: the mask there is flesh, and there is a pale
Speaker 1: face pierced all over with holes from the spikes in
Speaker 1: the mask, with empty dark sockets the eyes should be.
Speaker 1: And then all over the face, into and out of
Speaker 1: the holes crawl scorpions. Yes, live scorpions.
Speaker 2: Little black scorpions. I have to say one of the
Speaker 2: one of the flaws in watching films on your iPhone
Speaker 2: on a plane is that sometimes you do miss the
Speaker 2: little details. So when I rewatched portions of this film
Speaker 2: this morning, I did get to notice that they were
Speaker 2: scorpions for the first time, and I was very excited.
Speaker 1: Crubion says, no comment on the scorpions, by the way,
Speaker 1: but he says, those empty eyes seem to be looking
Speaker 1: at us, and yeah, it is gross. But Cubion, while
Speaker 1: they're messing around here, he accidentally cuts his hand on
Speaker 1: the glass of the coffin window, and as the two
Speaker 1: doctors are leaving, we see that some of Crubion's blood
Speaker 1: drips down into the coffin and stains the face of
Speaker 1: the body inside. I think we can all tell where
Speaker 1: this is going to go. And you know what, this
Speaker 1: is also a plot point in a Paul Nashi film
Speaker 1: that would come later. And have you seen this one
Speaker 1: Rob the Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman from nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1: I have not.
Speaker 2: It's not in either of the Nashy collection volumes that
Speaker 2: I have, so it's still on my list.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I've got the four k of that one.
Speaker 1: In that film, there's an ancient vampire queen who is
Speaker 1: revived from her cough at her burial place when a
Speaker 1: scholar cuts her hand and drips blood into the grave
Speaker 1: onto her. Also in that movie, the vampire queen is
Speaker 1: played by Patty Shepherd, who kind of looks like Barbara Steel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: I can see it, especially the design if you look
Speaker 1: up the way she's dressed with like the black veil
Speaker 1: as the vampire queen in that movie. It's a very
Speaker 1: Barbara Steele in this movie. Look, so I think Paul
Speaker 1: Nashi had Black Sunday on the brain a good bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean this film inspired just about everybody.
Speaker 1: So once the doctors get back up to the surface, bam,
Speaker 1: they come face to face with an extremely unsettling lady
Speaker 1: played by Barbara Steele, who is out walking her two
Speaker 1: hell hounds in the ruins. Now you might think, like, whoa,
Speaker 1: the witch is already resurrected, like how'd she beat them
Speaker 1: up to the top, But no, the witch is not
Speaker 1: resurrected yet. Barber Steele is, as we said earlier, playing
Speaker 1: two roles in the film She is the long dead
Speaker 1: witch Asa in the but she is also in the
Speaker 1: present that family line's unwitting descendant, Katya so Kachya lives
Speaker 1: in her ancestral estate with her father, Prince Vida, and
Speaker 1: her brother Constantine, and here Kaya is out walking her
Speaker 1: two dogs. The doctors introduce themselves, and Kaya explains that
Speaker 1: she was out walking her dogs when she heard the
Speaker 1: gun shot. So they explain what happened, and they apologize
Speaker 1: for entering the chapel without permission, and then she said
Speaker 1: she's significantly I'm going to say, more weird and ominous
Speaker 1: here than Katya is in some later scenes where sit
Speaker 1: like when they first meet her. Here, she's an odd lady,
Speaker 1: she says, in this dreamy voice. Everything is going to ruin.
Speaker 1: My father, Prince Vida refuses to repair even this old chapel.
Speaker 1: This place, in his eyes, is a curse. And suddenly
Speaker 1: the dogs start barking, and the coachman calls out that
Speaker 1: the carriage is repaired. So Krubayon begs Kotya's pardon and
Speaker 1: says that they have to leave, but Gori Bek is
Speaker 1: clearly he doesn't want to go. He is smitten with
Speaker 1: Katya's beauty and he's just got Vita fever. He's like,
Speaker 1: I live here now.
Speaker 2: Plus he's a dog guy, and she clearly has two
Speaker 2: dogs if she loves a lot. So you know, he
Speaker 2: instantly it's matchmaking in his head.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is my dog. These are my dogs, Kerber
Speaker 1: and us, and so he tells they are like, well,
Speaker 1: I have to leave now, but I'm going to be
Speaker 1: spending the night at Mirror Garad, and I really hope
Speaker 1: I will see you again. He has no reason to
Speaker 1: think he would ever see her again.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, I mean we we the viewer know that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's probably gonna happen. But why would he think he
Speaker 2: would run into her?
Speaker 1: And then she says in a kind of ominous way,
Speaker 1: I didn't know if this actually had any significance. She says,
Speaker 1: I trust you will have a good night at Mirror Garad.
Speaker 1: Did that ever mean anything? I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: all that spooky about Mirror Garod.
Speaker 2: Now it's like, I guess, just the nearest town.
Speaker 1: I don't know this is.
Speaker 2: I guess this whole sequence with her does feel like
Speaker 2: you said, more dream like yeah, than what is to
Speaker 2: come with this character? And I don't know maybe Bob
Speaker 2: is leaning in a bit. He often has these sequences
Speaker 2: in his pictures that feel very dream like, and so
Speaker 2: maybe he's indulging all I don't want to criticize, but
Speaker 2: maybe he's indulging almost too much in the dreamlike qualities
Speaker 2: of this sequence.
Speaker 1: It's more feeling than logic, I think. The doctors so
Speaker 1: they go on their way and Katya is left alone,
Speaker 1: making these sad, glassy eyes at them as they leave.
Speaker 1: Her face is like literally sparkling in this shot, by
Speaker 1: the way, the I don't know how exactly they achieve
Speaker 1: that effect, but it's crazy. And gore Beck looks back
Speaker 1: at her out the window of the carriage as they leave.
Speaker 1: Oh also worth noting that they take the little triptic
Speaker 1: icon with them, So Gurubian just like yoing, that's mine.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and steal that from
Speaker 2: the grave, but not knowing that that's a load bearing artifact.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. So Meanwhile, back inside the chapel, we see
Speaker 1: the grave of the Witch festering, and some frightening music swells,
Speaker 1: and then inside the black socket of the witch's eye,
Speaker 1: a dark, creamy liquid begins to froth.
Speaker 2: Again. It's almost amazing how disgusting the gore is in
Speaker 2: this picture despite being black and white.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that night at the castle we meet the rest
Speaker 1: of Kachia's family. Fire is roaring in the hearth. Katya
Speaker 1: is sitting at the piano playing music by herself. Her
Speaker 1: brother Constantine, who is he's kind of a young, high
Speaker 1: spirited guy. He's a hunter. He's busy cleaning an antique rifle.
Speaker 1: And her father is seated before the fire in a
Speaker 1: high backed chair, just staring into the blaze, looking haunted
Speaker 1: and depressed.
Speaker 2: Your typical Gothic car family really in many respects.
Speaker 1: Yes. So, Katya at one point stops playing the piano
Speaker 1: when she hears a distant wailing coming from outside the castle,
Speaker 1: and everybody stops to listen. Constantine believes it is a
Speaker 1: pack of wolves, which explains why he found no deer
Speaker 1: in his treks through the forest lately. But Prince Vida, however,
Speaker 1: he looks troubled and he says, those are not wolves.
Speaker 1: Then he looks up at the painting on the wall
Speaker 1: and he gasps in terror. He says, the griffin it
Speaker 1: has moved up on the wall, we see a painted
Speaker 1: portrait of a Vida family ancestor. A young woman who
Speaker 1: looks exactly like Katya, dressed in a regal gown, looking
Speaker 1: mysteriously toward the painter, and underfoot in the painting is
Speaker 1: a griffin. Gryffins seem to be a motif.
Speaker 2: Here.
Speaker 1: There are monstrous carvings on either side of the fireplace,
Speaker 1: and I think these are gryffins too. Yes, Prince Vida
Speaker 1: and Katya agreed that the painting has somehow changed. The
Speaker 1: griffin is different. It was once depicted as dead, but
Speaker 1: now it appears alive. How could it have changed in
Speaker 1: the painting. Constantine is skeptical. He notes that the painting
Speaker 1: has always had a strange effect on Katia. She says,
Speaker 1: it's like a flame that can't escape. There's something alive
Speaker 1: about it, something different about the eyes, the hands, as
Speaker 1: if it were hiding something. Sometimes I'm afraid to go
Speaker 1: near it. And then Prince Vida is like, well, we'll
Speaker 1: say no more about it. But the Prince is so
Speaker 1: he's like frightened and exhausted and he just needs to
Speaker 1: be alone. I think he complains that instead of warmth,
Speaker 1: a chill seems to be coming out of the fireplace
Speaker 1: and there's actually a reason for that we will discover later.
Speaker 1: But he says his spirit is weary and he must
Speaker 1: say good night to his children, so they leave him alone.
Speaker 1: And there is a scene here where Prince Vida describes well,
Speaker 1: he talks to his butler Ivan or Yvonne, and he
Speaker 1: describes the curse upon his family. So he says, you
Speaker 1: know what today is the Feast of Saint George, And
Speaker 1: I had to look that up for when that is
Speaker 1: generally celebrated April twenty third, And I kind of hate
Speaker 1: that this goes against the otherwise seasonally perfect setting of
Speaker 1: this film. It's like so halloweeny. But like a lot
Speaker 1: of these other stories, you know, what is it with
Speaker 1: There's so many old world horror stories set in the spring,
Speaker 1: set at the Feast of Saint George, or on Walpurgas knocked,
Speaker 1: you know, like late April or the beginning of May.
Speaker 1: Really seems to have been a powerful, spooky season.
Speaker 2: That's fascinating that we may have to explore that later
Speaker 2: on and stuff to blow your mind, because it seems
Speaker 2: counterintuitive when you think of, you know, the change of
Speaker 2: the seasons, right like, yeah, spring is upon us, the
Speaker 2: cold winter of death is passing away, the sun has
Speaker 2: returned to us. Shouldn't it just be all feasts and preparation,
Speaker 2: Like why are there still threats afoot? Yeah, it would
Speaker 2: be interesting to dig into that.
Speaker 1: Maybe this year, toward the end of April, we should
Speaker 1: do like a half Tober week where we figure out
Speaker 1: what it is that's spooky about spring. Yeah, absolutely spooky
Speaker 1: spring anyway, Prince Vida explains, Okay, it's Saint George's Day.
Speaker 1: And on Saint George's Day two hundred years ago, his
Speaker 1: ancestral relative the which Asa and her consort Yavoodisch were
Speaker 1: put to death for being in league with Hell, And
Speaker 1: one hundred years later, on the same day of the
Speaker 1: year the Feast of Saint George, an earthquake rocked the
Speaker 1: chapel where US's body was laid to rest under the
Speaker 1: mask of Satan, and it split her tomb a sun
Speaker 1: her as if she were trying to break out of
Speaker 1: death itself to accomplish her revenge. And that very night,
Speaker 1: his ancestor, Princess Macha, who looked exactly like Asa, died mysteriously.
Speaker 1: She was only twenty one. Now the Prince's daughter Katya
Speaker 1: is twenty one, and she too is the image of Asa,
Speaker 1: so he's terrified of what is going to happen to
Speaker 1: her and to them all. But if An reminds him,
Speaker 1: even if what you say is true, the Cross will
Speaker 1: protect you. Quote these monsters are terrified by the symbol
Speaker 1: of Christ. Always have it near you and you'll be safe.
Speaker 1: Drink your toddy, sir, before it gets cold.
Speaker 2: I like the inclusion of the toddy. Do you think
Speaker 2: it's a vodka toaddi, because you can. You can make
Speaker 2: a toddy with various spirits, or I mean even without
Speaker 2: a spirit. I think if you just have some hot
Speaker 2: water and some I've heard the lemon juice and some
Speaker 2: money that can coal whalifies as a TODDI.
Speaker 1: Is that Okay? I actually didn't know what a TODDI was.
Speaker 1: I assumed I just knew it was hot and that
Speaker 1: it had alcohol in it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's I don't know. Some people
Speaker 2: out there may be a little more specific about toddies,
Speaker 2: but it's my loose understanding that they're a wide variety
Speaker 2: of hot spirit drinks that can be referred to as toddies, Okay,
Speaker 2: without getting you know, full on into like hot buttered
Speaker 2: grum and so forth.
Speaker 1: So anyway he goes. He's like, yes, yes, Yvonne, I
Speaker 1: will drink my toddy. Goes to drink the toddy, and
Speaker 1: in the liquid he sees reflected the mask of Satan.
Speaker 1: Oh fabulous, and he says it's death. I see death.
Speaker 1: But he resolves that they cannot win against the symbol
Speaker 1: of Christ. So once again, here we see elsewhere. We're
Speaker 1: back inside the tomb in the chapel, and the wind
Speaker 1: is whipping outside in the world above, and in ASA's
Speaker 1: grave we see a close up of her face. And
Speaker 1: last time her eye sockets were they were kind of
Speaker 1: pooling with that thick fluid. Now they are surging with
Speaker 1: a white, vitreous jelly, forming pale, empty orbs without pupils. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at the end at meer Garad, the two doctors are
Speaker 1: enjoying the local vodka. So everybody's having some alcohol tonight. Gorbek,
Speaker 1: by the way, he is drunk. And it is a
Speaker 1: swinging party. They got a guy playing a tuba. It's
Speaker 1: all over the place.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's Gothic horror. And as we've seen in
Speaker 2: our discussion of our of the universal horror pictures, you
Speaker 2: got to have some sort of a beer hall, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's you know, I guess if you're going for
Speaker 2: some sort of a like a Germanic or Romanian, Moldovian
Speaker 2: whatever setting. Like, Yeah, given the time period, it makes
Speaker 2: sense for there to be some sort of a pub
Speaker 2: type environment that's at the center of local life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Gorbec is enjoying that that pub life. He
Speaker 1: is thoroughly growdable here where he is revealing how obsessed
Speaker 1: he is with the princess, Like he's telling crew Ion,
Speaker 1: I'm not ready to go back to that castle right now,
Speaker 1: ask her to marry me. But crube Ion convinces him, no,
Speaker 1: you should go to bed instead, and he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: and he goes to bed. And the older doctor meanwhile,
Speaker 1: he's gonna go out for a walk in the night
Speaker 1: air before he turns in. And there's a very nice
Speaker 1: creepy little segment here where we follow the innkeeper's daughter
Speaker 1: as she is sent out alone to milk the cow.
Speaker 1: She doesn't want to go because the barn is creepy,
Speaker 1: it's right next to the haunted cemetery, and she's afraid,
Speaker 1: but she's forced to go milk the cow anyway, and
Speaker 1: has to. She really has to walk through some kind
Speaker 1: of thick woods to get there. I was thinking, wouldn't
Speaker 1: there be a path to the barn.
Speaker 2: But for some for z owning reasons, the barn was
Speaker 2: built next to the abandoned cemetery where all the murders
Speaker 2: were buried two centuries ago.
Speaker 1: Maybe she's cutting through the forest like as a short cut,
Speaker 1: and that's why it's she's like like this vegetation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And along the way she is startled by bats and
Speaker 1: by a toad hopping in a puddle. She gets there
Speaker 1: to milk the cow, and the cow is named Irena.
Speaker 1: By the way, we learned the cow's name. I don't
Speaker 1: think they ever say the innkeeper's daughter's name. But there
Speaker 1: is a wonderfully creepy little set here where Krubaion goes
Speaker 1: out to smoke his pipe by a pond in the moonlight,
Speaker 1: and we hear the frogs croaking and the insects buzzing,
Speaker 1: And then the surface of the pond in our view
Speaker 1: dissolves and we see the face of the witch lying
Speaker 1: in her grave, still disfigured, with the holes in her
Speaker 1: face and demonically wide eyes now quickened with undead eyeballs,
Speaker 1: and she opens her lips and begins to speak, and
Speaker 1: she's got a voice like a snake, and she says,
Speaker 1: rise Yavoodich. And so in the cemetery across from the barn,
Speaker 1: a storm breaks out. The innkeeper's daughter, she's in there
Speaker 1: milking the cow, and she kind of watches through the
Speaker 1: window as lightning strikes in the grounds beyond. Then, in
Speaker 1: an awesome sequence, we zooms slowly on the unconsecrated grave
Speaker 1: of Yavoodich, which is sort of eroded now over all
Speaker 1: the years, and the earth in front of the grave
Speaker 1: slowly swells from below, with the damp soil pushing up
Speaker 1: and kind of unfolding outwards in clods from the void
Speaker 1: where the cursed body rests. And then we see a hand.
Speaker 1: It's slimy and pale, with nails like the claws of
Speaker 1: a beast, reaching up through the mud, and the body
Speaker 1: climbs out of the earth. And so the body stumbles
Speaker 1: through the haunted cemetery with the mask of Satan still
Speaker 1: nailed to its face. And then finally Yavootich comes to
Speaker 1: a stop beside this eroded table of tree roots, and
Speaker 1: he pulls the mask off of his face, revealing a
Speaker 1: fleshy butt disease looking form with a sunken left eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah. An incredible sequence here, I would argue, on par
Speaker 2: with any dead rising zombie sequence from any film of
Speaker 2: any decade. Just looks superb.
Speaker 1: So Yavoodich has demon work to do, and he does
Speaker 1: get right to work. He goes to Castle Vaido, where
Speaker 1: the Prince is sleeping fitfully. The Prince we see him
Speaker 1: wake from nightmares and sit up in his bed, and
Speaker 1: then a cold wind blows through the room, scattering music
Speaker 1: from the piano stand, and a secret door behind the
Speaker 1: fireplace hinges open slowly.
Speaker 2: Oh, and the griffin on it too, Yes, it looks amazing.
Speaker 1: Yes. And then standing in the doorway is Yavoodich, looking
Speaker 1: half alive and half zombie, with a modeled crust covered face,
Speaker 1: half hidden in shadow. And Yavoodich creeps towards the bed
Speaker 1: as the Prince lies there, frozen in terror. But at
Speaker 1: the last moment, the Prince remembers what can save him.
Speaker 1: It is the image of Christ, so he raises a
Speaker 1: silver cross and Yavootich is repelled. He snarls and he
Speaker 1: disappears from the room. Now Here the prince's family. They
Speaker 1: hear him crying out and they come running, and when
Speaker 1: he tells them what what happened, they decide they have
Speaker 1: to send for help. Katcha is like, oh, I happen
Speaker 1: to know there are two doctors staying at the end
Speaker 1: in mere Garad, let's send for them. She doesn't mention
Speaker 1: that one of them is her Prince Charley. So they
Speaker 1: send the groom of the castle to go retrieve the doctors.
Speaker 1: But what do you know when the carriage arrives outside
Speaker 1: the inn to get doctor krubayon, it is not the
Speaker 1: groom from the castle. It is Yavootich who's there driving
Speaker 1: the carriage.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this dark, elegant carriage here looking like this
Speaker 2: is the carriage that would take you away to Hell.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, you pass. As as Cinderella is headed toward
Speaker 1: the ball, you're going the opposite direction into Hell. And
Speaker 1: Yavootich is driving and Krubaion is just standing there beside
Speaker 1: the pond smoking his pipe, and Yavootich is like, you've
Speaker 1: got to come at once, We got to come. You
Speaker 1: got to come check on the prince. So off they go,
Speaker 1: and this scene is reminiscent of the carriage ride at
Speaker 1: Borgo Pass in Dracula, they go a little too fast.
Speaker 1: It's like the Hoggy, the Hoggy, the foggy haunted landscape.
Speaker 1: Yea at the castle, Yvudich leads Krubaion inside, but quickly
Speaker 1: starts to run ahead of him in the dim passageways,
Speaker 1: eventually disappearing, and so Krubion's like, what's going on, and
Speaker 1: he's trying to find his way. He sees the lantern
Speaker 1: down the hallway, but then he comes upon it and
Speaker 1: it's just hovering in mid air. And then Krubion wanders
Speaker 1: around lost until he comes into a room that is
Speaker 1: somewhat familiar because it is the eerie chapel where he
Speaker 1: was earlier the same day, with the tomb of the
Speaker 1: witch Aza gaping open as before, and Krubion is drawn
Speaker 1: to it. He approaches and looks inside to see eyes
Speaker 1: staring back at him. Her eyes are open now and
Speaker 1: they have pupils, and they see him. The witch is living.
Speaker 1: So he tries to run, but the doors to the
Speaker 1: chamber are locked. And then while he's like trying to
Speaker 1: get out, he turns back and he sees the witch's
Speaker 1: tomb shaking and rattling, and then it explodes. The rock
Speaker 1: walls go launching to the corners of the room and
Speaker 1: the witch is lying there and she gasps for breath.
Speaker 1: She turns to look at him, making one of the
Speaker 1: most alarmingly evil expressions in film history. This is one
Speaker 1: of the screenshots you may have seen from the film.
Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, just this maniacal grin on her face, bright eyes,
Speaker 2: and of course, you know, tremendous makeup and lighting also
Speaker 2: adding to this effect.
Speaker 1: She says, crubion, crubion, I've been waiting for you, and
Speaker 1: she bids him to look into her eyes and to
Speaker 1: come closer. She says, just a few drops of your
Speaker 1: blood brought me to life again. All of your blood
Speaker 1: will give me the strength to accomplish my vision. Come
Speaker 1: kiss me. My lips will transform you so powerless. He
Speaker 1: walks toward her, and she says, you will be dead
Speaker 1: to man, but you will be alive and death. And
Speaker 1: slowly he leans over her and he brings his lips
Speaker 1: to hers, and they kiss as she sort of reaches
Speaker 1: up and touches his hair. It's weirdly cold and passionate
Speaker 1: looking at the same time. It's weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this scene was one of those scenes.
Speaker 2: It was too hot for AIP at the time, and
Speaker 2: then they cut it a little bit. It's not very sexy,
Speaker 2: no no, but it's just too probably just too a
Speaker 2: mix of weirdness, darkness, and sexuality. There was just a
Speaker 2: little bit too much for the sensors.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So in Prince Vida's room, doctor Krubion arrives now,
Speaker 1: but he has much a changed demeanor. He is gruff
Speaker 1: and curt The doctor checks out the prince and he
Speaker 1: calms him, apparently with some kind of hypnosis. He kind
Speaker 1: of wipes his hand over his face and calms the prince.
Speaker 1: At one point, Constantine tries to explain what his father
Speaker 1: said had happened, and he holds out a cross to illustrate,
Speaker 1: and Crubion recoils. He says, take that away. He mustn't
Speaker 1: see it or it could provoke another attack. And then
Speaker 1: elsewhere we see Yavoodich in the chapel with ASA's body,
Speaker 1: and Yavoudich is speaking to her. He promises that he
Speaker 1: will help her live again and that what they he explains,
Speaker 1: what they need is Katya Asa will steal her youth
Speaker 1: and her beauty, kill her soul and live in her body.
Speaker 1: So that's the plan. We basically know what the bad
Speaker 1: guys are going to do now. The plan is to
Speaker 1: make vampire thralls, to get revenge on the entire Vida family,
Speaker 1: and to steal Kaya's life force so the witch can
Speaker 1: live again through her.
Speaker 2: There you go. Yeah, a three step plan. They seem
Speaker 2: perfectly capable of pulling it off. We noted that the
Speaker 2: narration made reference to vampires. I do feel like that
Speaker 2: narration hit the nail on the head a bit too hard,
Speaker 2: because what we have in this is like a form
Speaker 2: of vamporism, Like it's vamporism is more like the method
Speaker 2: or part of the resurrection scheme and not it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be like a clear monster identity so much
Speaker 2: in this picture once you get into the actual plot
Speaker 2: and the pacing of the thing, I agree.
Speaker 1: And that's what I was sort of talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: with the fact that the vampires, when they show back
Speaker 1: up again more than halfway through the movie, it feels
Speaker 1: like a surprise. Yeah, yeah, something doesn't even though they
Speaker 1: did say vampire earlier was at the very beginning, But yeah,
Speaker 1: it almost just feels like one of the tricks in
Speaker 1: the witch bag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the full array of nightmare and horror are
Speaker 2: their toolbox, and this just happens to be one of
Speaker 2: the things they can draw on.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So during the sequence, Katchia is very concerned for her
Speaker 1: pro for her father, Prince Vida, and she prays for him,
Speaker 1: but doctor Krubayon puts her mind at ease and asks
Speaker 1: to be left alone with Prince Vida. So she leaves
Speaker 1: and the doctor then turns to his patient, his victim,
Speaker 1: and the next morning the family is away to discover
Speaker 1: to their horror that Prince Vida is dead in his
Speaker 1: bed with horrible scars on his face, and doctor kru
Speaker 1: Bayon is nowhere to be found. And at this point
Speaker 1: I wonder if I might now transition to recounting the
Speaker 1: movie in a little bit less detail, and we can
Speaker 1: discuss in a kind of summary way. But the next
Speaker 1: big thing that happens is we get Gore back back
Speaker 1: in action, because now some heroism needs to happen.
Speaker 2: Right right, and Crouvion has to be found. So there's
Speaker 2: a lot of calling for him, calling his name, looking
Speaker 2: around for him, and also like just a discussing his
Speaker 2: bedside manner, because like they're discussing the fact that like
Speaker 2: he seemed to just up and leave and now the
Speaker 2: prince is dead because of it, and he's like, that
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like him at all. He would not do that,
Speaker 2: e would not just run off into the night. Something
Speaker 2: serious must have happened exactly.
Speaker 1: So, Yeah, Gorbeka, who we must assume is quite hung over,
Speaker 1: he goes to the castle to find cru Bayon, and yeah,
Speaker 1: he has this kind of conflict with Constant and when
Speaker 1: he arrives. Also, we should note at the same time
Speaker 1: as he's traveling to the castle, there's a very creepy
Speaker 1: scene where children are playing by the rushing river in
Speaker 1: the valley beside the castle and they come across a
Speaker 1: dead body. And there's a cool trick in this shot
Speaker 1: where we don't realize there's a dead body in frame
Speaker 1: until after it's already inframe, because we are following a
Speaker 1: shirt as it flows down the river and the children
Speaker 1: are chasing it, and we're watching the shirt move through
Speaker 1: the water, and so the camera follows it and then
Speaker 1: there's this dead body in frame, and then somebody screams
Speaker 1: and points to it, and then you realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's yeah, there's a face right there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, creepy sequence, and of course.
Speaker 1: It was the body of Boris, the groom at the castle,
Speaker 1: who was supposed to be driving the carriage. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned Gorbak, he arrives at the castle, it's
Speaker 1: an icy reception because of his association with Krubaion. They're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: he just left and our father is dead now, so
Speaker 1: that's not very cool. But he sort of talks his
Speaker 1: way into coming up to see the body of Prince Vida,
Speaker 1: and while looking at it, Kachia faints and then here
Speaker 1: Gorbek begins tending to her, and he's obviously just head
Speaker 1: over heels. I guess he already was, but in this
Speaker 1: scene he's like he's trying to help her recover her senses,
Speaker 1: and he's just overwhelmed by her beauty. The scene also
Speaker 1: makes a point to show Katya wearing her father's silver
Speaker 1: crucifix around her neck dangling on her chest, and Gorbec
Speaker 1: looks at that. Why his eyes are drawn there, and
Speaker 1: you know, they don't specify one way or another, is
Speaker 1: it the symbol of Christ or is it just Katya?
Speaker 1: But then later that will be we will be reminded
Speaker 1: of that because like he's gonna come across a body
Speaker 1: wearing the same crucifix, and it's like, wait, is this
Speaker 1: who is this? I'm looking at right? But news of
Speaker 1: the discovery of Boris's body is brought to the castle
Speaker 1: by a crowd of locals, and this leads to an
Speaker 1: interrogation of the innkeeper's daughter. She explains that when he
Speaker 1: saw the carriage arrive the night before, it was not
Speaker 1: Boris who came to pick up doctor Krubayan, it was
Speaker 1: a man she'd never seen before. And it turns out
Speaker 1: as they're walking by a painting of Ya Vootage hanging
Speaker 1: up on the wall in the castle, She's like, that's him,
Speaker 1: That's the guy from the carriage, And I was thinking,
Speaker 1: why is there a painting of Ya Vootage hanging up
Speaker 1: in the castle?
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like a like a dank outcast warlock
Speaker 2: that one of their ancestors had a like a doomed
Speaker 2: romance with that ended in them both being executed and
Speaker 2: he was buried in a like in a murderer's grave. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: why is there a commissioned painting of him here? I'm
Speaker 2: not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, someone's confusing, but anyway, so Constantine and Katya ended
Speaker 1: up asking Gorbek to stay with them at the castle.
Speaker 1: Especially Katchya likes this guy, so, you know, stay at
Speaker 1: the castle and help us out. So here Gorbec goes
Speaker 1: into investigation mode. He investigates the body of Boris in
Speaker 1: the company of a local priest. This will become a
Speaker 1: kind of sidekick for Gorbek for much of the rest
Speaker 1: of the film.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, he's like looking at the punctures on
Speaker 1: the neck of the corpse. He's hearing the stories about
Speaker 1: crubaion strange behavior, and Gorbec is very in a familiar scene.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm a man of science, but none of
Speaker 1: this makes logical sense.
Speaker 2: Right, So we get kind of like our buddy cops. Here,
Speaker 2: one is logic, one is religion, Yes, one is science,
Speaker 2: one is the dark lore. And they're going to figure
Speaker 2: it out there on the case.
Speaker 1: Yes. And here we sort of launch into the third act.
Speaker 1: So we see Krubaion in vampire mode and Yavudich sneaking
Speaker 1: around the castle menacing people. They're creeping on Katchya because ultimately,
Speaker 1: you remember, they're going to bring her to the witch
Speaker 1: so the witch can steal her life force. At one point,
Speaker 1: there's a scene where one of these figures. We don't
Speaker 1: know which one is lurking until she takes her crucifix
Speaker 1: off for the night and the figure starts to reach
Speaker 1: a hand out from around a curtain and Gorbek Constantine
Speaker 1: come to check things out when she screams for help
Speaker 1: and she's saying I saw the hand I saw it,
Speaker 1: I saw it, and Gorebec's like, I'll get her a sedative, okay, dude.
Speaker 1: But then after this scene there is an encounter between
Speaker 1: Creubion and gor Beec. This is interesting. Crubion comes into
Speaker 1: his room and Gorbek's like, oh, I thought you had left.
Speaker 1: I didn't understand the stories people are telling me, Like
Speaker 1: why did you leave? And Creubion's just like, you need
Speaker 1: to get out of here and this is none of
Speaker 1: your business. Leave the castle, and Gorbec shows him the
Speaker 1: triptic icon that they found in the grave and says,
Speaker 1: you know, I've been trying to decipher this. But when
Speaker 1: he shows the icon to Crubion, the older doctor is
Speaker 1: just like ah and runs away. Can't look at this thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's an interesting sequence. So we see shades
Speaker 2: of this in various tales of the supernatural where somebody
Speaker 2: has turned but there's like some bit of their humanity
Speaker 2: left enough that they want to in this case, you know,
Speaker 2: warn their friend to go away. Yeah, that may or
Speaker 2: may not have you know, may or may not align
Speaker 2: with the master evil scheme and play here.
Speaker 1: I didn't take his warning here as particularly benevolent. I
Speaker 1: feel like you could read this as just like he's
Speaker 1: trying to get rid of him, just like get out.
Speaker 1: You know, you've got nothing to do with this, get
Speaker 1: out of our way.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he's too quick with a crucifix to kill right.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also in the scene we get the Hounds of Hell
Speaker 1: we met earlier, there's not on screen dog Gore, but
Speaker 1: there is, you know, it's kind of obscured in the
Speaker 1: black and white, but the dogs are found with their
Speaker 1: throats slashed here, presumably by Krubaion.
Speaker 2: Oh sad day for the dogs.
Speaker 1: Yes, And so later Gorbek and his priest's sidekick they
Speaker 1: translate the icon. And also at the same time, Gorbec
Speaker 1: is busy courting Katya, and they go walking through the
Speaker 1: gardens and the ruins together and there's a long exchange
Speaker 1: for them where they sort of they sympathize with each other,
Speaker 1: where Gorbeck offers or comfort because she's really despairing. She says,
Speaker 1: what is my life sadness and grief, something that destroys
Speaker 1: itself day by day and no one can rebuild it.
Speaker 1: Here is the image of my life. And she's pointing
Speaker 1: at the ruined gardens. She says, look at it. It's
Speaker 1: being consumed hour by hour like this garden, abandoned to
Speaker 1: a purposeless existence. And he tries to give her encouragement
Speaker 1: that she you know, that he'd like to help her.
Speaker 1: He encourages her to leave this place if it makes
Speaker 1: her unhappy, and while so like, he gives a speech
Speaker 1: about trying to dispel her worries about how sunlight touches
Speaker 1: even the darkest corners of this garden and the ruins,
Speaker 1: and she begs for his help and they embrace. Clearly
Speaker 1: he loves her and she loves him too, but she's
Speaker 1: she's like too busy being cursed to date anyone right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this. This came up in the House
Speaker 2: of Usher last year. Oh yeah, a similar plot where
Speaker 2: your your dark, depressed gothic girlfriend clearly needs to leave
Speaker 2: her doomed house. But it takes a bit of convincing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in this case, it is a very like, it's
Speaker 1: not you, it's me, Like, I really do like you,
Speaker 1: but I'm cursed anyway. Meanwhile, the human inhabitants of the
Speaker 1: castle are starting to put some things together. Yvonne accidentally
Speaker 1: uncovers some machinery and the secret passageways in the castle
Speaker 1: while trying to put out a curtain that catches fire,
Speaker 1: and so the good characters started investigating the secret passageways.
Speaker 1: Constantine and Gorbeck find paintings of the witch, like the
Speaker 1: paintings of the like the naked witch as she looks
Speaker 1: just like Katchya, except she's like standing there naked and evil,
Speaker 1: you know, eyes blazing at the painter, and they start
Speaker 1: to kind of put the pieces together. They find the
Speaker 1: body of the witch in the chapel once again, and
Speaker 1: they're like, wow, remarkable, how fresh she looks. Oh, she's breathing,
Speaker 1: and she is breathing, and they say, we're in the
Speaker 1: presence of an unnatural mystery. So Gorbek runs out of
Speaker 1: the castle to go get the priest to figure out
Speaker 1: how to fight this evil, while Constantine goes to protect Katcha.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, Gorbek and the priest they finally figure
Speaker 1: out a method. They go to the haunted cemetery to
Speaker 1: hunt for the grave of Yavootich to quench his demonic spirit.
Speaker 1: And they find the grave and inside the coffin they
Speaker 1: find not Yavootich but Krubaion. But how and the priest
Speaker 1: proves it. He says, this is no longer your friend,
Speaker 1: but a servant of the devil. And he demonstrates this
Speaker 1: by touching the doctor's face with a cross and its
Speaker 1: sizzles and burns. So the priest has determined from the
Speaker 1: inscription in that icon, the triptych, how to stop these
Speaker 1: evil spirits. You have to pierce the left eye of
Speaker 1: the vampire. So they like get a needle like thing
Speaker 1: or a stylus kind of and they pierce the eye
Speaker 1: and it kind of words everywhere, and then the being
Speaker 1: is defeated. That was a new one to me. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with stake through the heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now I have I have a question here. So
Speaker 2: are we to understand that the Crubillon who we saw
Speaker 2: earlier pleading with his friend to leave, that was not
Speaker 2: Cruebaillon at all.
Speaker 1: No, I think that was Crubion. He's just come back
Speaker 1: to I maybe that was in. I don't know it
Speaker 1: was that in the night time, and now he's come
Speaker 1: back to be under to lie in the coffin during
Speaker 1: the day. I'm not fair enough fair that would make sense,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that was him. But now he's defeated. No,
Speaker 1: no more demon cru bion, no more vampire mode. He's
Speaker 1: had his eye pierced. And so the priest explains to
Speaker 1: Gorbec what the witch's plan has to be. She's gonna
Speaker 1: possess the body of Kacia to have new life for herself,
Speaker 1: and the only way to stop it is to pierce
Speaker 1: the left eye of the witch. So, armed with this knowledge,
Speaker 1: Gorbec heads back to the castle. I think the priest
Speaker 1: is going to assemble an angry mob.
Speaker 2: Gotta have yes now.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, back at the castle, it's just a slaughterhouse. You
Speaker 1: get a lot of like creeping going on. Constantine gets
Speaker 1: frightened into a pit trap by Yavudich in one of
Speaker 1: the secret passageways. Yvonne gets hanged by the neck. And
Speaker 1: then while Katya is crying over her father's coffin the
Speaker 1: body of Prince Vida, her father rises again and he says,
Speaker 1: I am no longer your father. My blood is no
Speaker 1: longer your blood. The spirits of evil have rent that
Speaker 1: tie between us forever. And then a cursed poison flows
Speaker 1: in your veins, and then Katya faints, but before Prince
Speaker 1: Vida the vampire can drink her blood, we get vampire
Speaker 1: on vampire conflict. Yavuodich appears and he says, no, she
Speaker 1: is not for you, you know, she's for our demonic mistress,
Speaker 1: and then he sort of strangles the Prince Vida vampire
Speaker 1: and throws his body into the fireplace, and we get
Speaker 1: to see the vampire's face melting in the fire. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: gross gore. It's like a wax face that they actually
Speaker 1: show melting, nasty effect. So anyway, so now Katya, we're
Speaker 1: getting to the climax. Kaya's body is left unconscious next
Speaker 1: to the witch's coffin, and then we see the witch stirring.
Speaker 1: She reaches out and she touches Kachia's arm and through
Speaker 1: evil magic, she SAPs Kochia's life force. So on Kotya,
Speaker 1: we see the sort of vitality draining from her face,
Speaker 1: wrinkles and lines forming on her flesh. Meanwhile, the witch
Speaker 1: grows increasingly young and beautiful, like a drooping plant that
Speaker 1: has been watered.
Speaker 2: This was an interesting effect. It seemed to me that
Speaker 2: much of this was created just via the lighting, or
Speaker 2: at least if it was created another way. It was
Speaker 2: subtle enough that it didn't feel janky at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was a combination of lighting and
Speaker 1: makeup and editing transitions. But you're right, it's incredibly smooth.
Speaker 1: And the witch Asa says to her, She says, you
Speaker 1: did not know that you were born for this moment.
Speaker 1: You did not know that your life had been consecrated
Speaker 1: to me by Satan. But you sensed it, didn't you.
Speaker 1: You sensed it didn't you. That's why my portrait was
Speaker 1: such a temptation to you. You felt like your life
Speaker 1: and your body were mine. You felt like me because
Speaker 1: you were destined to become me, a useless body without life.
Speaker 1: The love that young man had for you might have
Speaker 1: saved you. Do you know that you could have been
Speaker 1: happy together? But I was stronger, and now you shall
Speaker 1: enjoy a beautiful life of evil and hate in me. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a gorbec comes back to the castle to save the day,
Speaker 1: and there's a great there's a fight scene between Yavoodich
Speaker 1: and Gorbyek. It's a real punch out. There's different kinds
Speaker 1: of fighting. There's striking and grappling to use. That is
Speaker 1: that the MMA terminology?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, okay, they're both.
Speaker 1: And it ends up near the pit trap that Constantine
Speaker 1: fell into earlier, and so Gorbek he like gets pushed
Speaker 1: over the edge and he's hanging on the edge there.
Speaker 1: You know, it's your classic like the hero's dangling over
Speaker 1: a pit or a precipice and the villain is standing
Speaker 1: above him. But actually Constantine comes to the rescue. We
Speaker 1: thought he fell to his death earlier, but he did not.
Speaker 1: It seems he was wounded but must have stayed hanging
Speaker 1: there somehow. And now he's here. Just he's here, and
Speaker 1: he's alive, just long enough to grab you a vootitch
Speaker 1: and throw him down into the spikes below. But then
Speaker 1: it seems like right after he helps Gorbek, he's like,
Speaker 1: I've got to die now.
Speaker 2: The spikes would seem to do it though.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, so I think yavootage is done. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's got to at least one of those must get
Speaker 1: in on his eye.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you stand a really good chance of it.
Speaker 1: So finally Gorbec makes it to Katya in the chapel
Speaker 1: where the witch's tomb was, and he gets there and
Speaker 1: it seems that Katya is there and conscious, and he says,
Speaker 1: thank god, I made it in time, and she says, yes,
Speaker 1: she wanted to kill me, and he's pointing to the
Speaker 1: body lying there on the witch's grave. But uh oh
Speaker 1: Gorbec doesn't realize that Asa already made the switch, and
Speaker 1: so he says, we must destroy her forever, and I
Speaker 1: know how it can be done. He says, don't look, Kotya.
Speaker 1: It's horrible, but I must do it, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: see that Asa is behind him, grinning with insanity, like yes.
Speaker 2: She's like, I can't believe it. I'm about to pull
Speaker 2: this off.
Speaker 1: He's gonna do it. It's great. But then, just before
Speaker 1: he stabs the eye, he sees on the corpse of
Speaker 1: the woman he believes to be the witch, the crucifix necklace.
Speaker 2: Which shouldn't be possible.
Speaker 1: Right, And then he picks it up and presses it
Speaker 1: to her flesh to make sure, and nothing happens, and
Speaker 1: then he understands. And here's where we get a great
Speaker 1: moment where he's like, wait, come Katya, but he knows
Speaker 1: who she really is now, and he pulls aside her
Speaker 1: cloak for the bone, reveal her body underneath, Like below
Speaker 1: the neck, she looks normal from the neck up, but
Speaker 1: below the neck she is some kind of bone monster.
Speaker 1: Like she's a skeletal sort of creature.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she's like mostly rotted flesh and bone underneath. So
Speaker 2: we get a glimpse of her rib cage and it's
Speaker 2: like rib cage first. So we're like, we're like, oh, oh,
Speaker 2: this is definitely the Dark Queen.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So she says, no, I am not your love. She's caught.
Speaker 1: She admits that. She says, I am not your love.
Speaker 1: There she lies dead forever, forever, and she just again
Speaker 1: she's a real just a hater to the bone. She loves,
Speaker 1: loves pointing out your suffering. All her family is destroyed
Speaker 1: all and then Asa she's like, now I'm going to
Speaker 1: take care of Gorbek. So she tries to hypnotize Gorbek
Speaker 1: like she did with krubae On. She said, look into
Speaker 1: my eyes, and she gives this speech where she says,
Speaker 1: don't you feel the joy and the beauty of hating?
Speaker 2: I love this line. We were chatting a little bit
Speaker 2: about this off Mike because the reading about it, like
Speaker 2: apparently in some versions of it, perhaps the original version,
Speaker 2: she says haites instead of hating. But I actually love
Speaker 2: it more as hating because I feel like it gets
Speaker 2: down to the emotional core of Satanism in this picture.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, it is about It is about hating
Speaker 2: the world and hating those around you, and that's what
Speaker 2: they's what that's what makes them thrive.
Speaker 1: This witch is hate incarnate. She's just malice. She wants,
Speaker 1: she hates, and she wants to hurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she wants to share that hate and hurchard
Speaker 2: with everyone.
Speaker 1: But just when you think she's about to hypnotize, Gore
Speaker 1: bec the priest arrives with the mob of angry townsfolk,
Speaker 1: and you know that that will just really solve your
Speaker 1: witch problem.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a weird feeling to think we're gonna
Speaker 1: end with a witch burning and that's the happy ending.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It is interesting to reflect on this film that
Speaker 2: in the early goings, we have the Inquisition at work
Speaker 2: and they're seemingly like doing a good job. They don't
Speaker 2: finish the job, but they're they're in the right because
Speaker 2: the supernatural threat in this film is real, and likewise,
Speaker 2: the angry mob is up against an actual supernatural natural
Speaker 2: fot they their suspicions are correct, so they are also
Speaker 2: in the right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a kind of I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: we're used to more often the modern perspective of like
Speaker 1: recognizing that this mob violence is bad or that there
Speaker 1: was something, you know, something perverse and wrong going on
Speaker 1: in the Witch Trials. But no, in this case, just
Speaker 1: within the world of the movie, this witch is really
Speaker 1: about as bad as it gets. So's they're doing a
Speaker 1: good job to good day's work burning this witch. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they take away the witch. They burn her at
Speaker 1: the stake, and what they get it done really quick.
Speaker 1: They like the fire blazes and she's on this tied
Speaker 1: to this pillar and she burns up. And on one hand,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, so the evil is defeated, But it
Speaker 1: seems like a real downer ending because Gorebeck and the
Speaker 1: priest watched the witch burn while Kachia lies dead behind them,
Speaker 1: and you know, we're almost hearing ringing in our ears
Speaker 1: that just bitter malicious speech that the witch gave says
Speaker 1: I'm not your love. There she lies dead forever forever,
Speaker 1: But there's a happy twist, so Gorbec goes back to
Speaker 1: her and she comes to life. It seems almost did
Speaker 1: you understand it that when the witch is destroyed, that
Speaker 1: sort of rebalances the life force in some way and
Speaker 1: that allows Katchya to come back to life.
Speaker 2: I guess so, yeah, I guess that would be my
Speaker 2: interpretation of it, or that she was lying about her
Speaker 2: being dead anyway, because she seemed really excited about tricking
Speaker 2: him into stabbing his girlfriend through the eyeball. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: as if that was going to perhaps kill her. I
Speaker 2: don't know. Again, we kind of get into the dreamlike
Speaker 2: qualities of things here, and you know, maybe we don't
Speaker 2: have to lean too hard and logical interpretation of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it is a very very dark film and a
Speaker 1: very dark story, but it does have a happy ending,
Speaker 1: sort of happy end. I mean there's a lot of
Speaker 1: carnage along the way, and Katya is saved, and Katchya
Speaker 1: and Gorebeck they can live on and they can be together.
Speaker 2: They can move to the city away from the cursed
Speaker 2: castles in great yards.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'll take it. And that's Black Sunday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, just a real treat of a film. As
Speaker 2: great as anyone has ever told you who it is.
Speaker 2: And we're going to join the chorus by saying yeah,
Speaker 2: Black Sundays tremendous. It has more than stood the test
Speaker 2: of time. Definitely check it out. It's a great film.
Speaker 2: If you want some dedicated, focused Halloween viewing, tremendous. If
Speaker 2: you just want something on in the background while you
Speaker 2: do other Halloween things, this is a fine choice as well.
Speaker 1: Agreed.
Speaker 2: All right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
Speaker 2: out this episode of Weird House Cinema. We will remind
Speaker 2: you that se to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: but we do a short form episode on Wednesdays and
Speaker 2: on Fridays. We set aside most serious concerns to just
Speaker 2: talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. We
Speaker 2: have I believe one last Weird House Cinema episode to
Speaker 2: put out in October this year, so stay tuned to
Speaker 2: see what that's going to be. Sometimes you'll get a
Speaker 2: peek ahead at what's coming up if you go over
Speaker 2: to our letterboxed page our username there is weird House,
Speaker 2: and we have a tremendous list of all the pictures
Speaker 2: we've covered over the years.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.